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34
HISTORY
Everyman, I will go with tiiee, and be thy guid^
In thy most need to go by thy side
THOMAS BABINGTON'/MACAULAY, hoM'm'^^^
1800. In 1825 he began contributing to the Edinburgh
Review. He entered Parliament in 1830, and in 1834
became a member of the Supreme Council of India.
In 1839 he was Secretary of War and in 1857 was
raised to the peerage. Died in 1859, and was bxoried in
Westminster Abbey.
MACAU LAY'S HISTORY
^^^•^^ENGLAND
FROM THE ACCESSION OF JAMES II
IN FOUR VOLUMES • VOLUME ONE
INTRODUCTION BY
DOUGLAS JERROLD
LONDON J. M. DENT & SONS LTD
NEW YORK E.P.DUTTON&COINC
All rights reserved
by
J. M. DENT & SONS LTD
Aldine House • Bedford Street • London
Made in Great Britain
at
The Aldine Press • Letchworth • Herts
First published 1848
First published in this edition 1906
Last reprinted 1953
'9S3
INTRODUCTION
Thomas Babington Macaulay was bom at Rothley Temple in
Leicestershire on St. Crispin's Day, 25th October 1800. At the age
of eighteen he went to Trinity College, Cambridge, and was elected a
fellow in October 1824. His first article in the Edinburgh Review, on
Milton, appeared in August 1825. From that time, and for many
years, he was a regular contributor and his writings brought him to
the notice of a Tory Lord Chancellor, Lord Lyndhurst, who, in spite
of Macaulay's politics, appointed him a Commissioner in Bankruptcy
m 1828. The following year Lord Lansdowne offered him a seat in
Parliament without asking for any pledges as to voting. Macaulay
made his first speech in Parliament on 5th April 1830 and, in
1832, became Secretary to the Board of Control (which looked after
the affairs of the East India Company). The following year he,
with the chairman of the Board, was responsible for piloting through
the House of Commons the bill for renewing the Company's Charter
Soon afterwards he was offered a seat in the Supreme Council of
India, as constituted by the new act, at a salary of /io,ooo a year
He sailed for India in 1834, securely established at the age of thirtv-
four alike in fame and fortune.
Having served for four years in this office he returned to England
in 1838, and in March 1839 began his History of England, on which
his fame largely rests, although it is certain that his historic minute
written as a Member of Council in India, which decided that the
educational system of India should be devoted to English not to
Oriental studies, has had a greater influence on the destinies both of
Great Britain and of Asia, than any views propounded bv the
History. ■'
In September 1839 Macaulay, who had re-entered Parliament as
a supporter of Lord Melbourne's Government, entered the Cabinet
as Secretary at War. When the Government fell in 1841, he was
active m opposition but was able to resume work on the History
He returned to public office under Lord John Russell in 1846 but
was defeated at Edinburgh at the general election of 1847 He
re-entered Parliament in 1852 but declined the offer of a Cabinet
post and made his last speech in the House of Commons in July
1853. He was from 1847 on, until his death in 1859, mainly occu-
pied with the History, the first and second volumes of which were
published in 1848 and the third and fourth in 1855. The fifth
volume was published in 1861, after his death, being prepared for
the press by Lady Trevelyan.
These biographical details are very relevant to an understanding
ot Macaulay's approach to the writing of his History. Macaulay
was by birth a member of the new prosperous trading and banking
middle class, which had risen steadily to opulence and influence
throughout the eighteenth century, and which, after, and as the
result of, the Reform Act of 1832, attained to the chief power in the
V
VI INTRODUCTION
country. Their family fortunes were founded largely on commerce,
and the immense expansion of trade and manufacturing industry
made them, as long as the franchise remained relatively restricted,
extremely secure.
To the aristocrats the Act of 1832 spelt the end of their absolute
monopoly of power. To the country gentlemen, the repeal of the
Corn Laws spelt impoverishment. To the clergy of the established
Church, the challenge of materialism, of nonconformity, of the
Catholic revival, and of Darwinism spelt anxiety and a vastly
diminished intellectual influence. The aristocratic and landed
interest was still, indeed, strong enough politically for a fairly
regular alternation of Tory and Whig governments, but the social
and psychological climate of the country was Whig. The gospel
of progress seemed proven, the sole condition being the progressive
abolition of privilege, both monarchical and aristocratic.
To Macaulay, as to most others of his class and generation, the
Glorious Revolution, the final triumph over Popery and absolutism,
was the start of an era of brilliant progress which had reached its
political culmination with the Reform Bill and the repeal of the
Com Laws, of which the material achievement was symbolized and
displayed in the Great Exhibition of 185 1. It was an age of easy
certainties, and to Macaulay the most certain of all things was that
the Whigs were the providential instruments of the splendour of
England's achievement.
To proclaim this, and most of all the unique greatness of the
England of his own day, was the purpose, manifestly revealed, of
his great History, certainly one of the two greatest narratives, and,
in the judgment of most, the greatest, in our literature.
Fired with his particular ambition, to glorify and to justify a
party, a creed, and an epoch, the epoch being that in which he him-
self lived, he achieved it triumphantly according to the standard
which he set himself and in the eyes of the middle class of his own
day, for whom he wrote and whom it was his expressed wish less to
instruct than to please. A contemporary reviewer writing in the
Edinburgh Review reflects the measure of the delight which the
History gave to its first readers.
"Mr Macaulay has a singular felicity of style and as he moves along
his path of narrative, spreads a halo around him, which beguiles the
distance and dazzles his companions. It is a style, undoubtedly,
which might often provoke criticism, as far as artistic rules are con-
cerned; sometimes elaborated to excess, sometimes too familiar;
with sentences too curiously balanced, and unnecessary antitheses
to express very simple propositions. But with all this, and much
more of the same kind that might be said, the fascination remains.
The tale, as we proceed, flows on faster and faster. Page after
page vanishes under the entranced eye of the reader; and, whether
we will or no, we are forced to follow as he leads — so light, and ga-v,
and agreeable does the pathway appear. Even on the most beaten
ground, his power of picturesque description brings out lights and
shadows — views of distances and of roadside flowers — never seen,
or remarked, or recollected before. . . .
"We must begin by noticing one cardinal merit — almost an
original one — of Mr. Macaulay's book, which meets us on the very
threshold. He is the first, we think, who has succeeded in giving
INTRODUCTION VII
to the realities of history (which is generally supposed to demand
and require a certain grave austerity of style) the Hghtness, variety,
and attraction of a work designed only to amuse. All historians we
have ever read — not excepting Gibbon and Hume, and including all
others in our language — are open to this remark. To read them is
a study, an effort of the intellect — well repaid indeed by the result,
but still necessarily intent and laborious. Mr. Macaulay has, with
an instinctive sense both of truth and of the power to realize it,
perceived that a true story may be, and should be, as agreeably told
as a fictitious one; that the incidents of real life, whether political
or domestic, admit of being so arranged as, without detriment to
accuracy, to command all the interest of an artificial series of facts;
that the chain of circumstances which constitutes history may be
as finely and gracefully woven as in any tale of fancy, and be as
much more interesting as the human countenance, with all its
glowing reality of life, and structure, and breathing beauty, excels
the most enchanting portrait that ever passed from the pencil of
Kneller or of Lawrence.
"This we consider a very signal achievement. . . . Who that has
read these two volumes will ever forget them, or the eventful and
stirring scenes they record ? And this result on the mind of the
reader, it is undoubtedly the highest triumph of descriptive or
narrative writing to produce. The scene is actually before us. It
does not exist in mere words. We do not recollect it as we used to
do Caesar at school — by the place of the page where this or that fact
was recorded. We have pictured to ourselves the living and actual
reality of the men, and the times, and the actions he describes —
and close the volume as if a vast and glowing pageant had just
passed before our eyes."
That this is what Macaulay chiefly wished to do is reasonably
certain. In a letter to a friend written on 5th November 1841 (seven
years before the first publication), Macaulay had said, speaking of
his chosen period, which he then intended to be from 1688 to the
end of the reign of George III: "The materials for an amusing
narrative are immense. I shall not be satisfied unless I produce
something which shall, for a few days, supersede the last fashionable
novel in the talk of young ladies." To the end Macaulay remained
strangely indifferent to the accepted canons of historical criticism
or to the now universally accepted standards of a historian's
responsibility. When his battle chapters were criticized as inferior
to those of the great contemporary French historian, Thiers, on the
ground that he neglected to give his readers even such essential facts
as the numbers engaged, Macaulay contented himself with the almost
cynical comment "I hope my volumes will be more attractive
reading." When a more weighty criticism appeared in the press
(after the publication of the first four volumes), to the effect that he
had gravely underestimated the general European contribution to
the allied victories over Louis XIV, and that a study of the archives
of the allied states would have corrected this, Macaulay comments
in his diary: "As to grubbing in Saxon or Hessian archives . . .
I should have doubled my labour." Macaulay, morever, seldom, if
ever, made corrections on points of fact, when errors were pointed
out which could and should have been corrected in subsequent im-
pressions, of which there were many in hislifetime. The late Sir Charles
Vlll INTRODUCTION
Firth, in his brilliant commentary on Macaulay's book, to which the
writer of this introduction is very greatly indebted, hints at the
explanation, when he says of Macaulay's essay on History (written
for the Edinburgh Review in 1828), that it is noteworthy that the
tendency of modem historians is to enlarge on the difficulty of
finding out the truth, whereas Macaulay enlarges upon the difficulty
of stating it."
The truth in plain English is that Macaulay was, as Cotter
Morison remarked, "deficient in the true historical sense." He
compared the past, to its disparagement, with the future. That is
no blame to Macaulay: to do this was his aim. But it is the very
opposite of the true historical approach, which is to seek to under-
stand and to enable others to understand, the problems of the past
as they appeared to those who had to solve them, to get into the
mind of past generations, to understand their values and to appraise
them in the light of the beliefs and the knowledge of the age, and,
above all, to judge the past ages by their own standards. It
follows that the abiding value of Macaulay's History is the light it
throws on the age in which, and for which, it was written. We
cannot, if we have read it, fail to understand the mind, the temper,
and the morality of England in the Indian Summer of her greatness
in 1851.
The History must be read with three other general qualifications.
Macaulay was uninterested and, broadly speaking, unfamiliar with
philosophy and, a fortiori, with theology. More suprisingly, but
equally certainly, he was uninterested in political speculation. The
mind of the Catholic Church he never attempted to understand,
although he made a manifest effort to understand the political
problems of the English Roman Catholics in the seventeenth century.
As for political speculation, the theories of John Locke, perhaps the
greatest of Whig political philosophers, who lived in and at the
heart of Macaulay's chosen epoch, are not discussed or even
summarised in the History. As for the Tories, Macaulay hated
them in his own day and he, therefore, hated and denigrated them
in the past. He was particularly prejudiced against the seventeenth-
century country gentlemen. His statement, for instance, that "the
English esquire of the seventeenth century did not materially differ
from a rustic miller or alehouse keeper of our times," is plain rubbish,
in the style of Mr. Lloj^d George in his Limehouse days. His readers
could never guess that the main burden of local government through-
out the seventeenth century and long afterwards was placed on the
Justices of the Peace in Quarter Sessions and that the work was, on
the whole, and by common consent of historians of all schools,
competently and conscientiously done.
The second qualification which must be borne in mind in reading
the History is that Macaulay's temper, as well as his intellectual
approach, was unhistorical. He loved rhetorical antitheses. To
captivate his readers — and how well he succeeds — he heightens
contradictions, when it is the historian's function to explain them.
As Samuel Rawson Gardiner remarked, his judgment of situations
is superb, but his personal judgments are weak.
Thirdly, Macaulay was profoundly insular. A Dutchman,
William III, was, it is true, his hero, but only because he became the
champion of the Whig cause in England, whereas in fact William
INTRODUCTION IX
came to England only because it was only by so doing that he could
tip the balance of power in Europe against Louis XIV. Macaulay
throughout underestimates the contribution of the allied European
powers to the victory over Louis XIV, which served the liberties of
all. Most particularly, he misjudged the indispensable contribution
of the Austrians in halting and finally breaking the military power
of Turkey in Europe. As Sir Charles Firth said, "for the sake of
displaying one giant [William III], he peoples all Europe with
pigmies."
There are few errors of fact in Macaulay's History, despite the
great detail of its narrative, and very few indeed which Macaulay
could have corrected, but he is notably unjust and inaccurate in his
charges against William Penn, Graham of Claverhouse, and Lord
Torrington. There are also a number of curious omissions in the History.
There is no discussion of American and Colonial trade. The Navigation
Acts are not mentioned. The great increase of overseas trade
between the Restoration, in 1660, and the end of the century (it
was nearly doubled), is not mentioned. The measures for the pro-
tection of agriculture are not mentioned. The very important
Settlement Act of 1662, which prevented people moving in search of
work, is not mentioned, nor the increase in the expenditure on poor
relief in William Ill's reign, largely due to the seven years of bad
harvests and depression from 1792 to 1798. There is no mention
of the precise strength of William Ill's invasion army. Little is
said of the immense significance to the story of the British Empire
of the War of the Grand Alliance ; generally, the colonial history of
the period is sketchy to a degree.
It is a tribute to the essential greatness of the History and to the
grandeur of its narrative style that these defects of approach and
temper have to be mentioned and these omissions noted. Macaulay
set out to paint a picture of an age, of the balance of political forces,
of the social and economic conditions of all classes, of the clash of
personalities, to rekindle the ashes of its controversies, to reawaken
its passions, and all the time to point the contrast, sometimes
overtly, sometimes implicitly, with the England of his own day.
He succeeded so superbly that no one who wishes to study the period
of which he wrote can do othenvise than begin with Macaulay; no
one who begins Macaulay will stop until he has finished him, and all
who do so will be largely, and for ever, influenced by him. As
Leslie Stephen said, "the pictures which he has drawn have, rightly
or wrongly, stamped themselves ineffaceably upon the popular
mind."
Ranke, the most cold-blooded and cautious of German historians,
went so far, in 1875, as to say that Macaulay's History decided the
victory of the Whig view and, thus, permanently deflected the
course of English politics. I believe that judgment must stand.
Even to-day, almost exactly a hundred years after the first publica-
tion of the History, to doubt the wisdom or propriety of the Eliza-
bethan religious settlement, to defend the actions and policies of the
Stuarts, to doubt the justification of the Rebellion and the glorious
nature of the Revolution of 1688, is, in the general view, to assert
a paradox. The "paradox" has been often and learnedly asserted
in our own day by scholars of much higher rank and students of
religion and politics far more profound than Macaulay, but, until
X INTRODUCTION
another historian of his literary genius arises, Macaulay's view will
remain the view of the ordinary citizen.
It is time now for the purchaser of the book to begin his reading
of the History. When he has finished it, and despite its great
length the reading will not take him very long, because of the vigour
and brilliance of the narrative, he will know the answer to the
pregnant question put by the great liberal historian. Lord Acton,
in a letter to Mary Gladstone.
"Remember that the essays are really flashy and superficial. . . .
It is the history that is wonderful. He knew nothing respectably
before the seventeenth century, he knew nothing of foreign history,
of religion, philosophy, science, or art. . . . He is, I am persuaded,
grossly, basely unfair. Read him therefore to find out how it comes
that the most unsympathetic of critics can think him very nearly
the greatest of English writers."
Douglas Jerrold.
May 1953.
BIBLIOGRAPHICAL NOTE
The following is a list of Lord Macaulay's works as first published in book form during
his lifetime:
1 819 Pompeii (prize poem).
1821 Evening (prize poem).
1842 Lays of Ancient Rome.
1843 Critical and historical essays.
These essays originally appeared in the Edinburgh Review as follows: Milton,
August 1825; Machiavelli, March 1827; Hallam's Constitutional History, Sep-
tember 182S; Southey's Colloquies, January 1830; R. Montgomery's Poems,
April 1830; Civil Disabilities of Jews, January 1831; Byron, June 1831; Croker's
Boswell, September 1831; Pilgrim's Progress, December 1831; Hampden,
December 1831; Burleigh, April 1832; War of Succession in Spain, January
1S33; Horace Walpole, October 1833; Lord Chatham, January 1834; Mackin-
tosh's History of Revolution, July 1835; Bacon, July 1837; Sir William Temple,
October 1838; Gladstone on Church and State, April 1839; CUve, January 1840;
Ranke's History of the Popes, October 1840; Comic Dramatists, January 1841;
Lord Holland, July 1841; Warren Hastings, October 1841; Frederick the Great,
April 1842; Madame D'Arblay, January 1843; Addison, July 1843; Lord
Chatham (2nd art.), October 1844.
1848 New edition of the Lays of Ancient Rome, including two new poems, "Ivry" and
"The Armada."
:The History of England, vols, i and ii.
1849 Inaugural Address (Glasgow).
Speeches.
1855 The History of England, vols, iii and iv.
The following were published in book form for the first time after Lord Macaulay's
death:
i860 Miscellaneous Writings, two volumes.
These volumes include the following further essays, which originally appeared
in the Edinburgh Review under the following dates: Dryden, January 1828;
History, May 1828; Mill on Government, March 1829; Westminster Reviewer's
Defence of Mill, June 1829; Utilitarian Theory of Govermnent, October 1829;
Sadler's Law of Population, July 1830; Sadler's Refutation Refuted, January
1831; Mirabeau, July 1832; Barere, April 1844.
1861 The History of England, vol. v, edited by Lady Trevelyan.
The first edition of the Complete Works of Lord Macaulay was published under the
editorship of Lady Trevelyan, in eight volumes, in 1866.
CONTENTS
VOLUME ONE
CHAPTER I
Introduction . . , i
Britain under the Romans . 3
Britain under the Saxons . 3
Effect of the Conversion of the
Saxons to Christianity . 5
Danish Invasions . . 7
The Normans ... 8
The Norman Conquest and its
Effects .... 10
Effects of the Separation of
England and Normandy . 1 1
Amalgamation of Races . 12
Conquests of the English on
the Continent . . .14
Wars of the Roses . . 16
Extinction of Villenage . 16
Beneficial Operation of the
Roman Catholic Religion . 17
The Nature of the ancient
EngUsh Government often
misrepresented, and why . 19
Description of the limited
Monarchies of the Middle
Ages .... 21
Prerogatives of the ancient
English Kings, how limited 22
The Limitations not always
strictly observed, and why 22
Resistance an ordinary Check
on Tyranny in the Middle
Ages .... 26
Peculiar Character of the Eng-
lish Aristocracy . . 28
The Government of the
Tudors .... 30
The limited Monarchies of
the Middle Ages generally
turned into absolute Mon-
archies, and why . . 32
The English Monarchy a sin-
gular Exception, and why . 32
The Reformation and its
Effects • • . • 33
Origin of the Church of Eng-
land .... 38
Her peculiar Character . . 39
The Relation in which she
stood to the Crown . . 41
*A2 34
PAGE
The Puritans ... 44
Their Republican Spirit . 45
No systematic Parliamentary
Opposition offered to the
Government of Elizabeth,
and why .... 45
The Question of the Mono-
polies .... 47
Scotland and Ireland become
Parts of the same Empire
with England ... 48
Diminution of the Importance
of England after the Acces-
sion of James the First . 52
The Doctrine of Divine Right 53
The Separation between the
Church and the Puritans
becomes wider . . .56
Accession and Character of
Charles the First . . 62
Tactics of the Opposition in
the House of Commons . 63
Petition of Right . . 64
The Petition of Right violated 65
Character and Designs of
Wentworth ... 65
Character of Laud . . 66
The Star Chamber and High
Commission ... 67
Shipmoney ... 68
Resistance to the Liturgy in
Scotland .... 69
A Parliament called and dis-
solved .... 71
The Long Parliament . . 73
The first Appearance of the
two great English Parties . 74
The Irish Rebelhon . . 79
The Remonstrance . . 80
The Impeachment of the Five
Members . . .81
Departure of Charles from
London .... 82
Commencement of the Civil
War .... 85
Successes of the Royalists . 87
Rise of the Independents . 87
Oliver Cromwell . . .88
The Self-denying Ordinance . 89
Victory of the Parliament . 89
xi
Xll
CONTENTS
PAGE
Domination and Character of
the Army ... 90
Risings against the Military
Government suppressed . 92
The Proceeding against the
King .... 93
His Execution ... 96
Subjugation of Ireland and
Scotland .... 97
Expulsion of the Long Parlia-
ment . . . .98
The Protectorate of Oliver . 10 1
Oliver succeeded by Richard . 105
Fall of Richard and Revival of
the Long Parliament . 107
Second Expulsion of the Long
Parliament . . . 108
Monk and the Army of Scot-
land march into England . 109
Monk declares for a free
Parliament . . .111
General Election of 1660 . iii
The Restoration . . .112
CHAPTER II
The Conduct of those who
restored the House of
Stuart unjustly censured . 113
Abolition of the Tenures by
Knight Service . . 115
Disbanding of the Army . 115
Disputes between the Round-
heads and Cavaliers re-
newed . . . .116
Religious Dissension . . 118
Unpopularity of the Puritans 120
Character of Charles th«
Second .... 126
Characters of the Duke of
York and Earl of Clarendon 129
General Election of 1 66 1 . 131
Violence of the Cavaliers in
the new Parliament . .132
Persecution of the Puritans . 132
Zeal of the Church for heredit-
ary Monarchy . . -133
Change in the Morals of the
Comnumity . . .134
Profligacy of the Politicians of
that Age .... 136
State of Scotland . . 138
State of Ireland . . . 140
The Government becomes un-
popuJar in England . . 141
War with the Dutch . . 143
Opposition in the House of
Commons . . . 145
Fall of Clarendon . .146
State of Etu-opean Politics
and Ascendency of France
Character of Louis the Four
teenth
The Triple Alliance
The Country Party
Connection between Charles
the Second and France
Views of Lewis with respect to
England .
Treaty of Dover .
Nature of the English Cabinet
The Cabal .
Shutting of the Exchequer
War with the United Pro-
vinces and their extreme
Danger .
William Prince of Orange
Meeting of the Parliament
Declaration of Indulgence
It is cancelled, and the Test
Act passed
The Cabal dissolved
Peace with the United Pro-
vinces
Administration of Danby
Embarrassing Situation of the
Country Party .
Dealings of that Party with
the French Embassy
Peace of Nimeguen; violent
Discontents in England
Fall of Danby ; the Popish Plot
First General Election of 1679
Violence of the new House of
Commons
Temple's Plan of Government
Character of Halifax . .
Character of Sunderland
Prorogation of the Pcirlia-
ment ; Habeas Corpus Act .
Second General Election of
1679; Popularity of Mon-
mouth ....
La^vrence Hyde .
Sidney Godolphin
Violence of Factions on the
Subject of the Exclusion
BUI . . . .
Names of Whig and Tory
Meeting of Parliament; the
Exclusion Bill passes the
Commons
Exclusion Bill rejected by the
Lords; Execution of Staf-
ford ....
General Election ofi68i
Parliament held at Oxford and
dissolved ; Tory Reaction .
Persecution of the Whigs
149
152
152
153
155
157
158
159
162
162
163
165
165
167
168
168
170
171
172
174
177
179
179
182
185
186
187
191
191
192
193
194
195
195
196
198
The Charter of the City confis-
cated; Whig Conspiracies .
Detection of the Whig Con-
spiracies; Severity of the
Government
Seizure of Charters
Influence of the Duke of York
He is opposed by Halifax
Lord Keeper Guildford
PoUcy of Lewis
State of Factions in the Court
of Charles at the Time of his
Death ....
CONTENTS
Xlll
PAGE
PAGE
Highwaymen
. 286
199
Inns .
. 288
The Post Office .
. 290
The Newspapers .
291
201
The Newsletters .
• 293
202
The Observator .
. 294
203
Scarcity of Books in
Country
204
Places
■ 295
205
Female Education
. 296
207
208
CHAPTER III
Great Change in the State of
England since 1685 .
209
Population of England in 1685
211
The Increase of Population
greater in the North than in
the South
213
Revenue in 1685 .
215
Military System .
217
The Navy ....
223
The Ordnance
229
Noneffective Charge
229
Charge of Civil Government .
230
Great Gains of Courtiers and
Ministers
231
State of Agriculture
233
Mineral Wealth of the Country
237
Increase of Rent; the Country
Gentlemen
239
The Clergy ....
243
The Yeomanry
251
Growth of the Towns; Bristol
251
Norwich ....
253
Other County Towns
254
Manchester
255
Leeds ....
256
Sheffield ....
256
Birmingham
257
Liverpool ....
258
Watering places : Cheltenham,
Brighton, Buxton
259
Tunbridge Wells .
259
Bath
260
London ....
261
The City ....
263
The Fashionable Part of the
Capital ....
267
PoHce of London .
271
The Lighting of London
271
White Friars
272
The Court ....
273
The Coffeehouses
275
Difficulty of Travelling
279
Badness of the Roads .
280
Stage Coaches
284
Literary Attainments of
Gentlemen . . . 297
Influence of French Literature 298
Immorality of the Polite
Listerature of England . 299
State of Science in England . 304
State of the Fine Arts . . 309
State of the Common People;
Agricultural Wages . . 311
Wages of Manufacturers . 313
Labour of Children in Fac-
tories .... 315
Wages of different Classes of
Artisans . . . - 315
Number of Paupers . . 316
Benefits derived by the Com-
mon People from the Pro-
gress of Civilisation . . 317
Delusion which leads Men to
overrate the Happiness of
preceding Generations . 320
CHAPTER IV
Death of Charles the Second . 321
Suspicions of Poison . . 331
Speech of James the Second to
the Privy Council . . 332
James proclaimed . . 333
State of the Administration . 334
New Arrangements . . 336
Sir George Jeffreys . . 337
The Revenue collected with-
out an Act of Parliament . 341
A Parliament called . . 342
Transactions between James
and the French King . 342
Churchill sent Ambassador to
France ; his Historj' . . 345
Feelings of the Continental
Government towards Eng-
land .... 348
Policy of the Court of Rome . 349
Struggle in the Mind of
James; Fluctuations of his
Pohcy .... 352
Public Celebration of the
Roman CathoUc Rites in the
Palace .... 354
His Coronation . . • 355
XIV
CONTENTS
Enthusiasm of the Tories' Ad-
dresses .... 357
The Elections . . -358
Proceedings against Oates . 362
Proceedings against Danger-
field . . . .366
Proceedings against Baxter . 368
Meeting of the Parliament of
Scotland . . -371
Feeling of James towards the
Puritans .... 372
Cruel Treatment of the Scotch
Covenanters . . . 374
Feeling of James towards the
Quakers .... 377
William Penn . . . 379
Peculiar Favour shown to
Roman Catholics and
Quakers .... 382
Meeting of the English Parlia-
ment ; Trevor chosen
Speaker .... 384
Character of Seymour . . 384
The King's Speech to the Par-
liament .... 386
Debate in the Conomons;
Speech of Seymour . . 386
The Revenue voted . . 387
Proceedings of the Commons
concerning Religion . . 388
Additional Taxes voted; Sir
Dudley North . . -389
Proceedings of the Lords . 391
Bill for reversing the Attain-
der of Stafford . . . 392
CHAPTER V
Whig Refugees on the Con-
tinent .... 393
Their Correspondents in Eng-
land .... 393
Characters of the Leading
Refugees ; Ayloffe . . 394
Wade : Goodenough . . 395
Rumbold .... 396
Lord Grey .... 396
Monmouth .... 397
Ferguson .... 398
Scotch Refugees: Earl of
Argyle .... 402
Sir Patrick Hume . . 405
Sir John Cochrane ; Fletcher of
Saltoun . . . .405
Unreasonable Conduct of the
Scotch Refugees . . 406
Arrangements for an Attempt
on England and Scotland . 407
John Locke . . . 409
Preparations made by the
Government for the Defence
of Scotland
Conversation of James with
the Dutch Ambassadors
Ineffectual Attempts of the
Prince of Orange and of the
States General to prevent
Argyle from sailing .
Departure of Argyle from Hol-
land ....
He lands in Scotland
His Disputes with his Fol-
lowers ....
Temper of the Scotch Nation
Argyle's Forces dispersed
Argyle a Prisoner
His Execution
Execution of Rumbold .
Death of Ayloffe .
Devastation of Argyleshire ;
ineffectual Attempts to
prevent Monmouth from
leaving Holland
His Arrival at Lyme
His Declaration .
His Popularity in the West of
England .
Encounter of the Rebels with
the Militia at Bridport
Encounter of the Rebels with
the Militia at Axminster
News of the Rebellion carried
to London
Loyalty of the Parliament
Reception of Monmouth at
Taunton .
He takes the Title of King
His Reception at Bridgewater
Preparations of the Govern-
ment to oppose him .
His Design on Bristol .
He relinquishes that Design
Skirmish at Philip's Norton
Despondency of Monmouth
He returns to Bridgewater
The Royal Army encamps at
Sedgemoor
Battle of Sedgemoor
Pursuit of the Rebels
Military Executions ; Flight of
Monmouth
His Capture . . '
His Letter to the King .
He is carried to London
His Interview with the King
His Execution
His Memory cherished by the
Common People
410
410
410
412
413
414
415
418
419
423
424
426
427
429
430
431
433
434
435
435
438
441
443
444
447
448
449
450
451
452
455
460
461
463
464
465
466
469
472
CONTENTS
XV
Cruelties of the Soldiers in the
West; Kirke
Jeffreys sets out on the Wes-
tern Circuit
Trial of Alice Lisle
The Bloody Assizes
Abraham Holmes
Christopher Battiscombe
The Hewlings
Punishment of Tutchin
Rebels transported
Confiscation and Extortion .
Rapacity of the Queen and of
her Ladies
Cases of Grey, Cochrane,
Storey, Wade, Goodenough,
and Ferguson
Jeffreys made Lord Chancellor
Trial and Execution of Cor-
nish ....
Trials and Executions of Fern-
ley and Elizabeth Gaunt
Trial and Execution of Bate-
man ....
Cruel Persecution of the Pro-
testant Dissenters
CHAPTER VI
The Power of James at the
Height in the Autumn of
1685 ....
His Foreign Policy
His Plans of Domestic Govern-
ment ; the Habeas Corpus Act
The Standing Army
Designs in favour of the
Roman Catholic Religion .
Violation of the Test Act
Disgrace of Halifax; General
Discontent
Persecution of the French
Huguenots
Effect of that Persecution in
England; Meeting of Parlia-
ment ....
Speech of the King; an Oppo-
sition formed in the House
of Commons
Sentiments of Foreign Govern-
ments ....
Conunittee of the Commons
on the King's Speech
Defeat of the Government
Second Defeat of the Govern-
ment ; the King reprimands
the Commons .
Coke committed by the Com-
mons for Disrespect to the
King ....
Opposition to the Government
474 in the Lords; the Earl of
Devonshire . . .524
478 The Bishop of London . .525
479 Viscount Mordaunt . .526
483 Prorogation . . . 527
485 Trials of Lord Gerard and of
486 Hampden . . . 528
486 Trial of Delamere . . 529
487 Effect of his Acquittal . . 531
488 Parties in the Court; Feeling
489 of the Protestant Tories . 532
Publication of Papers found in
490 the Strong Box of Charles
the Second . . -534
Feeling of the respectable
495 Roman Catholics . . 535
495 Cabal of violent Roman
Catholics : Castelmaine . 536
496 Jermyn; White; Tyrconnel . 537
Feeling of the Ministers of
497 Foreign Governments . 539
The Pope and the Order of
499 Jesus opposed to each
other .... 541
500 The Order of Jesus . . 541
Father Petre . . . 546
The King's Temper and
Opinions . . -547
The King encouraged in his
Errors by Sunderland . 548
502 Perfidy of Jeffreys; Godol-
503 phin ; the Queen . . 551
Amours of the King; Cathar-
503 ineSedley . . -552
504 Intrigues of Rochester in
favoiu: of Catharine Sedley 554
505 Decline of Rochester's Influ-
509 ence .... 556
Castelmaine sent to Rome . 558
510 The Huguenots ill treated by
James . . . -559
511 The Dispensing Power . . 561
Dismission of refractory
Judges .... 562
514 Case of Sir Edward Hales . 563
Roman Catholics authorised
to hold Ecclesiastical Bene-
515 fices; Sclater; Walker . 565
The Deanery of Christchurch
516 given to a Roman Catholic 566
Disposal of Bishoprics . . 567
518 Resolution of James to use his
520 Ecclesiastical Supremacy
against the Chinrch . . 567
His Difficulties . . . 566
522 He creates a new Court of
High Commission . . 571
Proceedings against the
523 Bishop of London . . 573
XVI
CONTENTS
Discontent excited by the
public Display of Roman
Catholic Rites and Vest-
ments .... 574
Riots . . • -576
A Camp formed at Homislow 577
Samuel Johnson . . . 578
HughSpeke . . -579
Proceedings against Johnson 580
Zeal of the Anglican Clergy
against Popery; Controver-
sial Writings . . . 582
The Roman Catholic Divines
overmatched . . -583
State of Scotland . . 584
Queensberry; Perth; Melfort 585
Their Apostasy . . . 586
Favour shown to the Roman
CathoUc Religion in Scot-
land; Riots at Edinburgh 587
Anger of the King . .588
His Plans concerning Scotland 589
Deputations of Scotch Privy
Coim.cillors sent to London 589
Their Negotations with the
King; Meeting of the Scotch
Estates . . . .590
They prove refractory . . 591
They are adjourned; arbitrarj^
System of Government in
Scotland .... 594
Ireland .... 596
State of the Law on the Sub-
ject of ReUgion . . 596
Hostility of Races; the abori-
ginal Peasantry . -597
The aboriginal Aristocracy . 598
State of the English Colony . 599
Course which James ought to
have followed . . . 6or
His Errors .... 603
Clarendon arrives in Ireland as
Lord Lieutenant ; his Morti-
fications .... 605
Panic among the Colonists . 606
Arrival of Tyrconnel at Dub-
lin as General ; his Partiahty
and Violence . . . 608
He is bent on the Repeal of
the Act of Settlement; he
returns to England . . 610
The King displeased with
Clarendon . . .610
Rochester attacked by the
Jesuitical Cabal . . 611
Attempts of James to convert
Rochester . . .613
Dismission of Rochester . 617
Dismission of Clarendon; Tyr-
connel Lord Deputy . . 618
Dismay of the Enghsh Colon-
ists in Ireland . . . 620
Effect of the Fall of the
Hydes .... 621
CHAPTER I
I PURPOSE to write the history of England from the acces-
sion of King James the Second down to a time which is
within the memory of men still living. I shall recount the
errors which, in a few months, alienated a loyal gentry and
priesthood from the House of Stuart. I shall trace the course
of that revolution which terminated the long struggle between
our sovereigns and their parliaments, and bound up together
the rights of the people and the title of the reigning dynasty.
I shall relate how the new settlement was, during many
troubled years, successfully defended against foreign and
domestic enemies ; how, under that settlement, the authority
of law and the security of property were found to be com-
patible with a liberty of discussion and of individual action
never before known ; how, from the auspicious union of order
and freedom, sprang a prosperity of which the annals of human
affairs had furnished no example; how our country, from a
state of ignominious vassalage, rapidly rose to the place of
umpire among European powers ; how her opulence and her
martial glory grew together; how, by wise and resolute good
faith, was gradually established a public credit fruitful of
marvels which to the statesmen of any former age would have
seemed incredible ; how a gigantic commerce gave birth to a
maritime power, compared with which every other maritime
power, ancient or modern, sinks into insignificance ; how
Scotland, after ages of enmity, was at length united to
England, not merely by legal bonds, but by indissoluble ties
of interest and affection ; how, in America, the British colonies
rapidly became far mightier and wealthier than the realms
which Cortes and Pizarro had added to the dominions of
Charles the Fifth ; how, in Asia, British adventurers founded
2 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
an empire not less splendid and more durable than that of
Alexander.
Nor will it be less my duty faithfully to record disasters
mingled with triumphs, and great national crimes and follies
far more humiliating than any disaster. It will be seen that
even what we justly account our chief blessings were not
without alloy. It will be seen that the system which effect-
ually secured our liberties against the encroachments of kingly
power gave birth to a new class of abuses from which absolute
monarchies are exempt. It will be seen that, in consequence
partly of unwise interference, and partly of unwise neglect, the
increase of wealth and the extension of trade produced, to-
gether with immense good, some evils from which poor and
rude societies are free. It will be seen how, in two important
dependencies of the crown, wrong was followed by just retri-
bution ; how imprudence and obstinacy broke the ties which
bound the North American colonies to the parent state ; how
Ireland, cursed by the domination of race over race, and of
religion over religion, remained indeed a member of the
empire, but a withered and distorted member, adding no
strength to the body politic, and reproachfully pointed at by
all who feared or envied the greatness of England.
Yet, unless I greatly deceive myself, the general effect of
this chequered narrative will be to excite thankfulness in all
religious minds, and hope in the breasts of all patriots. For
the history of our country during the last hundred and sixty
years is eminently the history of physical, of moral, and of
intellectual improvement. Those who compare the age on
which their lot has fallen with a golden age which exists only
in their imagination may talk of degeneracy and decay : but no
man who is correctly informed as to the past will be disposed
to take a morose or desponding view of the present.
I should very imperfectly execute the task which I have
undertaken if I were merely to treat of battles and sieges, of
the rise and fall of administrations, of intrigues in the palace,
and of debates in the parliament. It will be my endeavour to
relate the history of the people as well as the history of the
government, to trace the progress of useful and ornamental
arts, to describe the rise of religious sects and the changes of
literary taste, to portray the manners of successive generations,
and not to pass by with neglect even ^he revolutions which
have taken place in dress, furniture, repasts, and public
amusements. I shall cheerfully bear the reproach of having
descended below the dignity of history, if I can succeed in
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 3
placing before the English of the nineteenth century a true
picture of the life of their ancestors.
The events which I propose to relate form only a single act
of a great and eventful drama extending through ages, and
must be very imperfectly understood unless the plot of the
preceding acts be well known. I shall therefore introduce my
narrative by a slight sketch of the history of our country from
the earliest times. I shall pass very rapidly over many
centuries : but I shall dwell at some length on the vicissitudes
of that contest which the administration of King James the
Second brought to a decisive crisis.*
Nothing in the early existence of Britain indicated the great-
ness which she was destined to attain. Her inhabitants, when
first they became known to the Tyrian mariners, were little
superior to the natives of the Sandwich Islands. She was
subjugated by the Roman arms ; but she received only a faint
tincture of Roman arts and letters. Of the western provinces
which obeyed the Caesars she was the last that was conquered,
and the first that was flung away. No magnificent remains of
Latian porches and aqueducts are to be found in Britain. No
writer of British birth is reckoned among the masters of
Latian poetry and eloquence. It is not probable that the
islanders were at any time generally familiar with the tongue
of their Italian rulers. From the Atlantic to the vicinity of
the Rhine the Latin has, during many centuries, been pre-
dominant. It drove out the Celtic ; it was not driven out by
the Teutonic ; and it is at this day the basis of the French,
Spanish, and Portuguese languages. In our island the Latin
appears never to have superseded the old Gaelic speech, and
could not stand its ground against the German.
The scanty and superficial civilisation which the Britons
had derived from their southern masters was effaced by the
calamities of the fifth century. In the continental kingdoms
into which the Roman empire was then dissolved, the con-
querors learned much from the conquered race. In Britain
the conquered race became as barbarous as the conquerors.
All the chiefs who founded Teutonic dynasties in the
* In this, and in the next chapter, I have very seldom thought it
necessary to cite authorities : for, in these chapters, I have not detailed
events minutely, or used recondite materials ; and the facts which I mention
are for the most part such that a person tolerably well read in English
history, if not already apprised of them, will at least know where to look
for evidence of them. In the subsequent chapters I shall carefully
indicate the sources of my information.
4 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
continental provinces of the Roman empire, Alaric, Theodoric,
Clovis, Alboin, were zealous Christians. • The followers of
Ida and Cerdic, on the other hand, brought to their settlements
in Britain all the superstitions of the Elbe. While the German
princes who reigned at Paris, Toledo, Aries, and Ravenna
listened with reverence to the instructions of bishops, adored
the relics of martyrs, and took part eagerly in disputes touching
the Nicene theology, the rulers of Wessex and Mercia were
still performing savage rites in the temples of Thor and
Woden.
The continental kingdoms which had risen on the ruins of
the Western Empire kept up some intercourse with those
eastern provinces where the ancient civilisation, though slowly
fading away under the influence of misgovernment, might still
astonish and instruct barbarians, where the court still exhibited
the splendour of Diocletian and Constantine, where the public
buildings were still adorned with the sculptures of Polycletus
and the paintings of Apelles, and where laborious pedants,
themselves destitute of taste, sense, and spirit, could still read
and interpret the masterpieces of Sophocles, of Demosthenes,
and of Plato. From this communion Britain was cut oif. Her
shores were, to the polished race which dwelt by the Bosporus,
objects of a mysterious horror, such as that with which
the lonians of the age of Homer had regarded the Straits of
Scylla and the city of the Lsestrygonian cannibals. There was
one province of our island in which, as Procopius had been
told, the ground was covered with serpents, and the air was
such that no man could inhale it and live. To this desolate
region the spirits of the departed were ferried over from the
land of the Franks at midnight. A strange race of fishermen
performed the ghastly office. The speech of the dead was
distinctly heard by the boatmen : their weight made the keel
sink deep in the water; but their forms were invisible to
mortal eye. Such were the marvels which an able historian,
the contemporary of Belisarius, of Simplicius, and of Tribonian,
gravely related in the rich and polite Constantinople, touching
the country in which the founder of Constantinople had
assumed the imperial purple. Concerning all the other
provinces of the Western Empire we have continuous informa-
tion. It is only in Britain that an age of fable completely
separates two ages of truth. Odoacer and Totila, Euric and
Thrasimund, Clovis, Fredegunda, and Brunechild, are historical
men and women. But Hengist and Horsa, Vortigern and
Rowena, Arthur and Mordred are mythical persons, whose
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 5
very existence may be questioned, and whose adventures must
be classed with those of Hercules and Romulus.
At length the darkness begins to break ; and the country
which had been lost to view as Britain reappears as England.
The conversion of the Saxon colonists to Christianity was the
first of a long series of salutary revolutions. It is true that the
Church had been deeply corrupted both by that superstition
and by that philosophy against which she had long contended,-
and over which she had at last triumphed. She had given a
too easy admission to doctrines borrowed from the ancient
schools, and to rites borrowed from the ancient temples.
Roman policy and Gothic ignorance, Grecian ingenuity and
Syrian asceticism, had contributed to deprave her. Yet she
retained enough of the sublime theology and benevolent
morality of her earlier days to elevate many intellects, and
to purify many hearts. Some things also which at a later
period were justly regarded as among her chief blemishes were,
in the seventh century, and long afterwards, among her chief
merits. That the sacerdotal order should encroach on the
functions of the civil magistrate would, in our time, be a great
evil. But that which in an age of good government is an evil
may, in an age of grossly bad government, be a blessing. It
is better that mankind should be governed by wise laws well
administered, and by an enlightened public opinion, than by
priestcraft : but it is better that men should be governed by
priestcraft than by brute violence, by such a prelate as Dunstan
than by such a warrior as Penda. A society sunk in ignorance,
and ruled by mere physical force, has great reason to rejoice
when a class, of which the influence is intellectual and moral,
rises to ascendency. Such a class will doubtless abuse its
power : but mental power, even when abused, is still a nobler
and better power than that which consists merely in corporeal
strength. We read in our Saxon chronicles of tyrants, who,
when at the height of greatness, were smitten with remorse, who
abhorred the pleasure and dignities which they had purchased
by guilt, who abdicated their crowns, and who sought to atone
for their offences by cruel penances and incessant prayers.
These stories have drawn forth bitter expressions of contempt
from some writers who, while they boasted of liberality, were in
truth as narrow-minded as any monk of the dark ages, and
whose habit was to apply to all events in the history of the
world the standard received in the Parisian society of the
eighteenth century. Yet surely a system which, however
deformed by superstition, introduced strong moral restraints
6 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
into communities previously governed only by vigour of muscle
and by audacity of spirit, a system which taught the fiercest
and mightiest ruler that he was, like his meanest bondman,
a responsible being, might have seemed to deserve a
more respectful mention from philosophers and philanthro-
pists.
The same observations will apply to the contempt with
which, in the last century, it was fashionable to speak of the
pilgrimages, the sanctuaries, the crusades, and the monastic
institutions of the middle ages. In times when men were
scarcely ever induced to travel by liberal curiosity, or by the
pursuit of gain, it was better that the rude inhabitant of the
North should visit Italy and the East as a pilgrim, than that he
should never see anything but those squalid cabins and
uncleared woods amidst which he was born. In times when
life and when female honour were exposed to daily risk from
tyrants and marauders, it was better that the precinct of a
shrine should be regarded with an irrational awe, than that
there should be no refuge inaccessible to cruelty and licen-
tiousness. In times when statesmen were incapable of forming
extensive political combinations, it was better that the Christian
nations should be roused and united for the recovery of the
Holy Sepulchre, than that they should, one by one, be over-
whelmed by the Mahometan power. Whatever reproach may,
at a later period, have been justly thrown on the indolence and
luxury of religious orders, it was surely good that, in an age of
ignorance and violence, there should be quiet cloisters and
gardens, in which the arts of peace could be safely cultivated,
in which gentle and contemplative natures could find an
asylum, in which one brother could employ himself in tran-
scribing the .^neid of Virgil, and another in meditating the
Analytics of Aristotle, in which he who had a genius for art
might illuminate a martyrology or carve a crucifix, and in
which he who had a turn for natural philosophy might make
experiments on the properties of plants and minerals. Had not
such retreats been scattered here and there, among the huts of a
miserable peasantry, and the castles of a ferocious aristocracy,
European society would have consisted merely of beasts of
burden and beasts of prey. The Church has many times been
compared by divines to the ark of which we read in the Book
of Genesis : but never was the resemblance more perfect than
during that evil time when she alone rode, amidst darkness and
tempest, on the deluge beneath which all the great works of
ancient power and wisdom lay entombed, bearing within her
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION "J
that feeble germ from which a second and more gloriou*
civilisation was to spring.
Even the spiritual supremacy arrogated by the Pope was, in
the dark ages, productive of far more good than evil. Its
effect was to unite the nations of Western Europe in one great
commonwealth. What the Olympian chariot course and the
Pythian oracle were to all the Greek cities, from Trebizond
to Marseilles, Rome and her Bishop were to all Christians of
the Latin communion, from Calabria to the Hebrides. Thus
grew up sentiments of enlarged benevolence. Races separated
from each other by seas and mountains acknowledged a fraternal
tie and a common code of public law. Even in Avar, the cruelty
of the conqueror was not seldom mitigated by the recollection
that he and his vanquished enemies were all members of one
great federation.
Into this federation our Saxon ancestors were now admitted.
A regular communication was opened between our shores and
that part of Europe in which the traces of ancient power and
policy were yet discernible. Many noble monuments which
have since been destroyed or defaced still retained their
pristine magnificence ; and travellers, to whom Livy and
Sallust were unintelligible, might gain from the Roman
aqueducts and temples some faint notion of Roman history.
The dome of Agrippa, still gUttering with bronze, the mau-
soleum of Adrian, not yet deprived of its columns and statues,
the Flavian amphitheatre, not yet degraded into a quarry, told
to the rude English pilgrims some part of the story of that
great civilised world which had passed away. The islanders
returned, with awe deeply impressed on their half opened
minds, and told the wondering inhabitants of the hovels of
London and York that, near the grave of St. Peter, a mighty
race, now extinct, had piled up buildings which would never be
dissolved till the judgment day. Learning followed in the
train of Christianity. The poetry and eloc^uence of the
Augustan age was assiduously studied in Mercian and North-
umbrian monasteries. The names of Bede, of Alcuin, and of
John, surnamed Erigena, were justly celebrated throughout
Europe. Such was the state of our country when, in the ninth
century, began the last great descent of the northern bar-
barians.
During several generations Denmark and Scandinavia con-
tinued to pour forth innumerable pirates, distinguished by
strength, by valour, by merciless ferocity, and by hatred of the
Christian name. No country suffered so much from these
0 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
invaders as England. Her coast lay near to the ports whence
they sailed ; nor was any part of our island so far distant from
the sea as to be secure from attack. The same atrocities which
had attended the victory of the Saxon over the Celt were now,
after the lapse of ages, suffered by the Saxon at the hand of
the Dane. Civilisation, just as it began to rise, was met by
this blow, and sank down once more. Large colonies of
adventurers from the Baltic established themselves on the
eastern shores, spread gradually westward, and, supported by
constant reinforcements from beyond the sea, aspired to the
dominion of the whole realm. The struggle between the two
fierce Teutonic breeds lasted during six generations. Each
was alternately paramount. Cruel massacres followed by cruel
retribution, provinces wasted, convents plundered, and cities
rased to the ground, make up the greater part of the history of
those evil days. At length the North ceased to send forth a
constant stream of fresh depredators, and from that time the
mutual aversion of the races began to subside. Intermarriage
became frequent. The Danes learned the religion of the
Saxons ; and thus one cause of deadly animosity was removed.
The Danish and Saxon tongues, both dialects of one wide-
spread language, were blended together. But the distinction
between the two nations was by no means effaced, when an
event took place which prostrated both, in common slavery
and degradation, at the feet of a third people.
The Normans were then the foremost race of Christendom.
Their valour and ferocity had made them conspicuous among
the rovers whom Scandinavia had sent forth to ravage Western
Europe. Their sails were long the terror of both coasts of the
channel. Their arms were repeatedly carried far into the
heart of the Carlovingian empire, and were victorious under
the walls of Maestricht and Paris. At length one of the feeble
heirs of Charlemagne ceded to the strangers a fertile province,
watered by a noble river, and contiguous to the sea which was
their favourite element. In that province they founded a
mighty state, which gradually extended its influence over
the neighbouring principalities of Britanny and Maine.
Without laying aside that dauntless valour which had been
the terror of every land from the Elbe to the Pyrenees, the
Normans rapidly acquired all, and more than all, the
knowledge and refinement which they found in the country
where they settled. Their courage secured their territory
against foreign invasion. They established internal order, such
as had long been unknown in the Frank empire. They
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 9
embraced Christianity, and with Christianity they learned a
great part of what the clergy had to teach. They abandoned
their native speech, and adopted the French tongue, in which
the Latin was the predominant element. They speedily
raised their new language to a dignity and importance which
it had never before possessed. They found it a barbarous
jargon ; they fixed it in writing ; and they employed it in
legislation, in poetry, and in romance. They renounced that
brutal intemperance to which all the other branches of the
great German family were too much inclined. The polite
luxury of the Norman presented a striking contrast to the
coarse voracity and drunkenness of his Saxon and Danish
neighbours. He loved to display his magnificence, not in huge
piles of food and hogsheads of strong drink, but in large and
stately edifices, rich armour, gallant horses, choice falcons,
well ordered tournaments, banquets delicate rather than
abundant, and wines remarkable rather for their exquisite
flavour than for their intoxicating power. That chivalrous
spirit, v/hich has exercised so powerful an influence on the
politics, morals, and manners of all the European nations, was
found in the highest exaltation among the Norman nobles.
Those nobles were distinguished by their graceful bearing and
insinuating address. They were distinguished also by their
skill in negotiation, and by a natural eloquence which they as-
siduously cultivated. It was the boast of one of their his-
torians that the Norman gentlemen were orators from the
cradle. But their chief fame was derived from their military
exploits. Every country, from the Atlantic Ocean to the
Dead Sea, witnessed the prodigies of their discipline and valour.
One Norman knight, at the head of a handful of warriors,
scattered the Ceks of Connaught. Another founded the
monarchy of the Two Sicihes, and saw the emperors both of
the East and of the West fly before his arms. A third, the
Ulysses of the first crusade, was invested by his fellow soldiers
with the sovereignty of Antioch ; and a fourth, the Tancred
whose name lives in the great poem of Tasso, was celebrated
through Christendom as the bravest and most generous of the
champions of the Holy Sepulchre.
The vicinity of so remarkable a people early began to pro-
duce an effect on the public mind of England. Before the
Conquest, English princes received their education in Nor-
mandy. English sees and English estates were bestowed on
Normans. The French of Normandy was familiarly spoken
in the palace of Westminster. The court of Rouen seems
lO HISTORY OF ENGLAND
to have been to the court of Edward the Confessor what the
court of Versailles long afterwards was to the court of Charles
the Second.
The battle of Hastings, and the events which followed it,
not only placed a Duke of Normandy on the English throne,
but gave up the whole population of England to the tyranny of
the Norman race. The subjugation of a nation by a nation has
seldom, even in Asia, been more complete. The country was
portioned out among the captains of the invaders. Strong
military institutions, closely connected with the institution of
property, enabled the foreign conquerors to oppress the
children of the soil. A cruel penal code, cruelly enforced,
guarded the privileges, and even the sports, of the alien
tyrants. Yet the subject race, though beaten down and
trodden under foot, still made its sting felt. Some bold men,
the favourite heroes of our oldest ballads, betook themselves
to the woods, and there, in defiance of curfew laws and forest
laws, waged a predatory war against their oppressors. As-
sassination was an event of daily occurrence. Many Normans
suddenly disappeared leaving no trace. The corpses of many
were found bearing the marks of violence. Death by torture
was denounced against the murderers, and strict search was made
for them, but generally in vain ; for the whole nation was in
a conspiracy to screen them. It was at length thought
necessary to lay a heavy fine on every Hundred in which a
person of French extraction should be found slain ; and this
regulation was followed up by another regulation, providing
that every person who was found slain should be supposed to
be a Frenchman, unless he were proved to be a Saxon.
During the century and a half which followed the Conquest,
there is, to speak strictly, no English history. The French
Kings of England rose, indeed, to an eminence which was the
wonder and dread of all neighbouring nations. They con-
quered Ireland. They received the homage of Scotland. By
their valour, by their policy, by their fortunate matrimonial
alliances, they became far more powerful on the Continent
than their liege lords the Kings of France. x\sia, as well as
Europe, was dazzled by the power and glory of our tyrants.
Arabian chroniclers recorded with unwilling admiration the fall
of Acre, the defence of Joppa, and the victorious march to
Ascalon ; and Arabian mothers long awed their infants to
silence with the name of the lion hearted Plantagenet. At one
time it seemed that the line of Hugh Capet was about to end
as the Merovingian and Carlovingian lines had ended, and
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION I I
that a single great monarchy would spread from the Orkneys
to the Pyrenees. So strong an association is established in
most minds between the greatness of a sovereign and the
greatness of the nation which he rules, that almost every
historian of England has expatiated with a sentiment of exul-
tation on the power and splendour of her foreign masters, and
has lamented the decay of that power and splendour as a
calamity to our country. This is, in truth, as absurd as it
would be in a Haytian negro of our time to dwell with national
pride on the greatness of Lewis the Fourteenth, and to speak
of Blenheim and Ramilies with patriotic regret and shame.
The Conqueror and his descendants to the fourth generation
were not Englishmen : most of them were born in France :
they spent the greater part of their lives in France : their
ordinary speech was French : almost every high office in their
gift was filled by a Frenchman : every acquisition which they
made on the Continent estranged them more and more from
the population of our island. One of the ablest among them
indeed attempted to win the hearts of his English subjects by
espousing an English princess. But, by many of his barons,
this marriage was regarded as a marriage between a white
planter and a quadroon girl would now be regarded in Vir-
ginia. In history he is known by the honourable surname of
Beauclerc ; but, in his own time, his own countrymen called
him by a Saxon nickname, in contemptuous allusion to his
Saxon connection.
Had the Plantagenets, as at one time seemed likely, suc-
ceeded in uniting all France under their government, it is pro-
bable that England would never have had an independent
existence. Her princes, her lords, her prelates, would have
been men differing in race and language from the artisans and
the tillers of the earth. The revenues of her great proprietors
would have been spent in festivities and diversions on the
banks of the Seine. The noble language of Milton and Burke
would have remained a rustic dialect, without a literature, a
fixed grammar, or a fixed orthography, and would have been
contemptuously abandoned to the use of boors. No man of
English extraction would have risen to eminence, except by
becoming in speech and habits a Frenchman.
England owes her escape from such calamities to an event
which her historians have generally represented as disastrous.
Her interest was so directly opposed to the interest of her
rulers that she had no hope but in their errors and misfortunes.
The talents and even the virtues of her six first French Kins,s
12 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
were a curse to her. The follies and vices of the seventh were
her salvation. Had John inherited the great qualities of his
father, of Henry Beauclerc, or of the Conqueror, nay, had he
even possessed the martial courage of Stephen or of Richard,
and had the King of France at the same time been as incapable
as all the other successors of Hugh Capet had been, the House
of Plantagenet must have risen to unrivalled ascendency in
Europe. But, just at this conjuncture, France, for the first
time since the death of Charlemagne, was governed by a prince
of great firmness and ability. On the other hand England
which, since the battle of Hastings, had been ruled generally
by wise statesmen, always by brave soldiers, fell under the
dominion of a trifler and a coward. From that moment her
])rospects brightened, John was driven from Normandy. The
Norman nobles were compelled to make their election between
the island and the continent. Shut up by the sea with the
people whom they had hitherto oppressed and despised, they
gradually came to regard England as their country, and the
English as their countrymen. The two races so long hostile,
soon found that they had common interests and common
enemies. Both were alike aggrieved by the tyranny of a bad
king. Both were alike indignant at the favour shown by
the court to the natives of Poitou and Aquitaine. The great
grandsons of those who had fought under William and the great
grandsons of those who had fought under Harold began to draw
near to each other in friendship ; and the first pledge of their
reconciliation was the Great Charter, won by their united
exertions, and framed for their common benefit.
Here commences the history of the English nation. The
history of the preceding events is the history of wrongs
inflicted and sustained by various tribes, which indeed all dwelt
on English ground, but which regarded each other with aversion
such as has scarcely ever existed between communities separated
by physical barriers. For even the mutual animosity of
countries at war with each other is languid when compared with
the animosity of nations which, morally separated, are yet locally
intermingled. In no country has the enmity of race been
carried farther than in England. In no country has that enmity
been more completely effaced. The stages of the process by
which the hostile elements were melted down into one homo-
geneous mass are not accurately known to us. But it is cer-
tain that, when John became King, the distinction between
Saxons and Normans was strongly marked, and that before the
end of the reign of his grandson it had almost disappeared.
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 1 3
In the time of Richard the First, the ordinary imprecation of
a Norman gentleman was " May I become an EngHshman ! "
His ordinary form of indignant denial was " Do you take me
for an Englishman ? " The descendant of such a gentleman a
hundred years later was proud of the English name.
The sources of the noblest rivers which spread fertility over
continents, and bear richly laden fleets to the sea, are to be
sought in wild and barren mountain tracts, incorrectly laid
down in maps, and rarely explored by travellers. To such a
tract the history of our country during the thirteenth century
may not unaptly be compared. Sterile and obscure as is that
portion of our annals, it is there that we must seek for the
origin of our freedom, our prosperity, and our glory. Then it
was that the great English people was formed, that the national
character began to exhibit those peculiarities which it has ever
since retained, and that our fathers became emphatically
islanders, islanders not merely in geographical position, but in
their politics, their feehngs, and theirs manners. Then first
appeared with distinctness that constitution which has ever
since, through all changes, preserved its identity ; that con-
stitution of which all the other free constitutions in the world
are copies, and which, in spite of some defects, deserves to be
regarded as the best under which any great society has ever yet
existed during many ages. Then it was that the House of
Commons, the archetype of all the representative assemblies
which now meet, either in the old or in the new world, held its
first sittings. Then it was that the common law rose to the
dignity of a science, and rapidly became a not unworthy rival
of the imperial jurisprudence. Then it was that the courage of
those sailors who manned the rude barks of the Cinque Ports
first made the flag of England terrible on the seas. Then it
was that the most ancient colleges which still exist at both the
great national seats of learning were founded. Then was formed
that language, less musical indeed than the languages of the
south, but in force, in richness, in aptitude for all the highest
purposes of the poet, the philosopher, and the orator, inferior
to the tongue of Greece alone. Then too appeared the first
faint dawn of that noble literature, the most splendid and the
most durable of the many glories of England.
Early in the fourteenth century the amalgamation of the
races was all but complete ; and it was soon made manifest, by
signs not to be mistaken, that a people inferior to none
existing in the world had been formed by the mixture of three
branches of the great Teutonic family with each other, and
14 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
with the aboriginal Britons. There was, indeed, scarcely any
thing in common between the England to which John had been
chased by Philip Augustus, and the England from which the
armies of Edward the Third went forth to conquer France.
A period of more than a hundred years followed, during
which the chief object of the English was to establish, by force
of arms, a great empire on the Continent. The claim of
Edward to the inheritance occupied by the House of Valois
was a claim in which it might seem that his subjects were little
interested. But the passion for conquest spread fast from the
prince to the people. The war differed widely from the wars
which the Plantagenets of the twelfth century had waged
against the descendants of Hugh Capet. For the success of
Henry the Second, or of Richard the First, would have made
England a province of France. The effect of the successes of
Edward the Third and of Henry the Fifth was to make France,
for a time, a province of England. The disdain with which, in
the twelfth century, the conquerors from the Continent had
regarded the islanders, was now retorted by the islanders on
the people of the Continent, Every yeoman from Kent to
Northumberland valued himself as one of a race born for
victory and dominion, and looked down with scorn on the
nation before which his ancestors had trembled. Even those
knights of Gascony and Guienne who had fought gallantly
under the Black Prince were regarded by the English as men
of an inferior breed, and were contemptuously excluded from
honourable and lucrative commands. In no long time our
ancestors altogether lost sight of the original ground of quarrel.
They began to consider the crown of France as a mere appen-
dage to the crown of England ; and when, in violation of the
ordinary law of succession, they transferred the crown of
England to the House of Lancaster, they seem to have
thought that the right of Richard the Second to the crown of
France passed, as of course, to that house. The zeal and
vigour which they displayed present a remarkable contrast to
the torpor of the French, who were far more deeply interested
in the event of the struggle. The greatest victories recorded
in the history of the middle ages were gained at this time,
against great odds, by the English armies. Victories indeed
they were of which a nation may justly be proud ; for they are
to be attributed to the moral superiority of the victors, a
superiority which was most striking in the lowest ranks. The
knights of England found worthy rivals in the knights of
France. Chandos encountered an equal foe in Du Guesclin.
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 1 5
But France had no infantry that dared to face the English bows
and bills. A French King was brought prisoner to London.
An English King was crowned at Paris. The banner of Saint
George was carried far beyond the Pyrenees and the Alps.
On the south of the Ebro the English won a great battle,
which for a time decided the fate of Leon and Castile ; and
the English Companies obtained a terrible pre-eminence among
the bands of warriors who let out their weapons for hire to the
princes and commonwealths of Italy.
Nor were the arts of peace neglected by our fathers durin-
that stirrmg period. While France was wasted by war, till sht
at length found in her own desolation a miserable defence
against invaders, the English gathered in their harvests,
adorned their cities, pleaded, traded, and studied in security.
Many of our noblest architectural monuments belong to that
age. Then rose the fair chapels of New College and of Saint
George, the nave of Winchester and the choir of York, the
spire of Salisbury and the majestic tow^ers of Lincoln. A
copious and forcible language, formed by an infusion of French
into German, was now the common property of the aristocracy
and of the people. Nor was it long before genius began to
apply that admirable machine to worthy purposes. While
English battalions, leaving behind them the devastated pro-
vinces of France, entered Valladolid in triumph, and spread
terror to the gates of Florence, English poets depicted in vivid
tints all the wide variety of human manners and fortunes, and
English thinkers aspired to know, or dared to doubt, where
bigots had been content to wonder and to believe. The same
age which produced the Black Prince and Derby, Chandos
and Hawkwood, produced also Geoffrey Chaucer and John
Wycliffe.
In so splendid and imperial a manner did the English
people, properly so called, first take place among the nations
of the world. Yet while we contemplate with pleasure the
high and commanding qualities which our forefathers displayed,
we cannot but admit that the end which they pursued was an
end condemned both by humanity and by enlightened policy,
and that the reverses which compelled them, after a lony
and bloody struggle, to relinquish the hope of establishing a
great continental empire, were really blessings in the guise of
disasters The spirit of the French was at last aroused : they
began to oppose a vigorous national resistance to the foreign
conquerors ; and from that time the skill of the English cap-
tains and the courage of the English soldiers were, happily
1 6 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
for mankind, exerted in vain. After many desperate struggles,
and with many bitter regrets, our ancestors gave up the contest.
Since that age no British government has ever seriously and
steadily pursued the design of making great conquests on the
Continent. The people, indeed, continued to cherish with
pride the recollection of Cressy, of Poitiers, and of Agincourt.
Even after the lapse of many years it was easy to fire their
blood and to draw forth their subsidies by promising them
an expedition for the conquest of France. But happily the
energies of our country have been directed to better objects ;
and she now occupies in the history of mankind a place far
more glorious than if she had, as at one time seemed not
improbable, acquired by the sword an ascendency similar to
that which formerly belonged to the Roman repubHc.
Cooped up once more within the limits of the island, the
warlike people employed in civil strife those arms which had
been the terror of Europe. The means of profuse expenditure
had long been drawn by the English barons from the oppressed
provinces of France. That source of supply was gone ; but
the ostentatious and luxurious habits which prosperity had
engendered still remained ; and the great lords, unable to
gratify their tastes by plundering the French, were eager to
plunder each other. The realm to which they were now con-
fined would not, in the phrase of Comines, the most judicious
observer of that time, suffice for them all. Two aristocratical
factions, headed by two branches of the royal family, engaged
in a long and fierce struggle for supremacy. As the animosity
of those factions did not really arise from the dispute about
the succession, it lasted long after all ground of dispute about
the succession was removed. The party of the Red Rose
survived the last prince who claimed the crown in right of
Henry the Fourth. The party of the White Rose survived the
marriage of Richmond and Elizabeth. Left without chiefs
who had any decent show of right, the adherents of Lancaster
rallied round a line of bastards, and the adherents of York set
up a succession of impostors. When, at length, many aspiring
nobles had perished on the field of battle or by the hands of
the executioner, when many illustrious houses had disappeared
for ever from history, when those great families which remained
had been exhausted and sobered by calamities, it was univer-
sally acknowledged that the claims of all the contending
Plantagenets were united in the house of Tudor.
Meanwhile a change was proceeding infinitely more
momentous than the acquisition or loss of any province, than
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 1 7
the rise or fall of any dynasty. Slavery and the evils by which
slavery is everywhere accompanied were fast disappearing.
It is remarkable that the two greatest and most salutary
social revolutions which have taken place in England, that
revolution which, in the thirteenth century, put an end to the
tyranny of nation over nation, and that revolution which, a few
generations later, put an end to the property of man in man,
were silently and imperceptibly effected. They struck contem-
porary observers with no surprise, and have received from
historians a very scanty measure of attention. Ihey were
brought about neither by legislative regulation nor by physical
force. Moral causes noiselessly effaced first the distinction
between Norman and Saxon, and then the distinction between
master and slave. None can venture to fix the precise moment
at which either distinction ceased. Some faint traces of the
old Norman feeling might perhaps have been found late in the
fourteenth century. Some faint traces of the institution of
villenage were detected by the curious so late as the days of
the Stuarts ; nor has that institution ever, to this hour, been
abolished by statute.
It would be most unjust not to acknowledge that the chief
agent in these two great deliverances was religion ; and it may
perhaps be doubted whether a purer religion might not have
been found a less efficient agent. The benevolent spirit of the
Christian morality is undoubtedly adverse to distinctions of
caste. But to the Church of Rome such distinctions are
peculiarly odious; for they are incompatible with other dis-
tinctions which are essential to her system. She ascribes to
every priest a mysterious dignity which entitles him to the
reverence of every layman ; and she does not consider any
man as disqualified, by reason of his nation or of his family,
for the priesthood. Her doctrines respecting the sacerdotal
character, however erroneous they may be, have repeatedly
mitigated some of the worst evils which can afflict society.
That superstition cannot be regarded as unmixedly noxious
which, in regions cursed by the tyranny of race over race,
creates an aristocracy altogether independent of race, inverts
the relation between the oppressor and the oppressed, and
compels the hereditary master to kneel before the spiritual
tribunal of the hereditary bondman. To this day, in some
countries where negro slavery exists. Popery appears in advan-
tageous contrast to other forms of Christianity. Jt is notorious
that the antipathy between the European and African races is
by no means so strong at Rio Janeiro as at Washington. In
15 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
our own country this peculiarity of the Roman Catholic system
produced, during the middle ages, many salutary effects. It
is true that, shortly after the battle of Hastmgs, Saxon prelates
and abbots were violently deposed, and that ecclesiastical
adventurers from the Continent were intruded by hundreds
into lucrative benefices. Yet even then pious divines of
Norman blood raised their voices against such a violation of
the constitution of the Church, refused to accept mitres from
the hands of the Conqueror, and charged him, on the peril of
his soul, not to forget that the vanquished islanders were his
fellow Christians. The first protector whom the English
found among the dominant caste was Archbishop Anselm. At
a time when the English name was a reproach, and when all
the civil and military dignities of the kingdom were supposed
to belong exclusively to the countrymen of the Conqueror, the
despised race learned, with transports of delight, that one of
themselves, Nicholas Breakspear, had been elevated to the
papal throne, and had held out his foot to be kissed by am-
bassadors sprung from the noblest houses of Normandy. It
was a national as well as a religious feeling that drew great
multitudes to the shrine of Becket, the first Englishman who,
since the Conquest, had been terrible to the foreign tyrants.
A successor of Becket was foremost among those who ob-
tained that charter which secured at once the privileges of the
Norman barons and of the Saxon yeomanry. How great a
part the Roman Catholic ecclesiastics subsequently had in the
abolition of villenage we learn from the unexceptionable testi-
mony of Sir Thomas Smith, one of the ablest Protestant coun-
sellors of Elizabeth. When the dying slaveholder asked for
the last sacraments, his spiritual attendants regularly adjured
him, as he loved his soul, to emancipate his brethren for whom
Christ had died. So successfully had the Church used her
formidable machinery that, before the Reformation came, she
had enfranchised almost all the bondmen in the kingdom except
her own, who, to do her justice, seem to have been very
tenderly treated.
There can be no doubt, that, when these two great revolu-
tions had been effected, our forefathers were by far the best
governed people in Europe. During three hundred years the
social system had been in a constant course of improvement.
Under the first Plantagenets there had been barons able to bid
defiance to the sovereign, and peasants degraded to the level of
the swine and oxen which they tended. The exorbitant power
of the baron had been gradually reduced. The condition of
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 1 9
the peasant had been gradually elevated. Between the
aristocracy and the working people had sprung up a middle
class, agricultural and commercial. There was still, it may be,
more inequality than is favourable to the happiness and virtue
of our species : but no man was altogether above the restraints
of law ; and no man was altogether below its protection.
That the political institutions of England were, at this
early period, regarded by the English with pride and affection,
and by the most enlightened men of the neighbouring nations
with admiration and envy, is proved by the clearest evidence.
But touching the nature of those institutions, there has been
much dishonest and acrimonious controversy.
The historical literature of England has indeed suffered
grievously from a circumstance which has not a little contrib-
uted to her prosperity. The change, great as it is, which her
polity has undergone during the last six centuries, has been
the effect of gradual development, not of demolition and
reconstruction. The present constitution of our country is, to
the constitution under which she flourished five hundred years
ago, what the tree is to the sapling, what the man is to the boy.
The alteration has been great. Yet there never was a moment
at which the chief part of what existed was not old. A polity
thus formed must abound in anomalies. But for the evils
arising from mere anomalies we have ample compensation.
Other societies possess written constitutions more symmetrical.
But no other society has yet succeeded in uniting revolution
with prescription, progress with stability, the energy of youth
with the majesty of immemorial antiquity.
This great blessing, however, has its drawbacks : and one of
those drawbacks is, that every source of information as to our
early history has been poisoned by party spirit. As there is no
country where statesmen have been so much under the influence
of the past, so there is no country where historians have been
so much under the influence of the present. Between these
two things, indeed, there is a natural connection. Where
history is regarded merely as a picture of life and manners,
or as a collection of experiments from which general maxims
of civil wisdom may be drawn, a writer lies under no very
pressing temptation to misrepresent transactions of ancient
date. But where history is regarded as a repository of title-
deeds, on which the rights of governments and nations depend,
the motive to falsification becomes almost irresistible. A
Frenchman is not now impelled by any strong interest either
to exaggerate or to underrate the power of the kings of the
20 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
house of Valois. The privileges of the States General, of the
States of Britanny, of the States of Burgundy, are now matters
of as little practical importance as the constitution of the
Jewish Sanhedrim, or of the Amphictyonic Council, The
gulph of a great revolution completely separates the new from
the old system. No such chasm divides the existence of the
English nation into two distinct parts. Our laws and customs
have never been lost in general and irreparable ruin. With us
the precedents of the middle ages are still valid precedents, and
are still cited, on the gravest occasions, by the most eminent
statesmen. Thus, when King George the Third was attacked
by the malady which made him incapable of performing his regal
functions, and when the most distinguished lawyers aid
politicians differed widely as to the course which ought, in
such circumstances, to be pursued, the Houses of Parliament
would not proceed to discuss any plan of regency till all the
examples which were to be found in our annals, from the
earliest times, had been collected and arranged. Committees
were appointed to examine the ancient records of the realm.
The first precedent reported was that of the year 1 2 1 7 : much
importance was attached to the precedents of 1326, of 1377,
and of 1422 : but the case which was justly considered as most
in point was that of 1455. Thus in our country the dearest
interests of parties have frequently been staked on the results
of the researches of antiquaries. The inevitable conse-
quence was, that our antiquaries conducted their researches
in the spirit of partisans.
It is therefore not surprising that those who have written
concerning the limits of prerogative and liberty in the old
polity of England should generally have shown the temper, not
of judges, but of angry and uncandid advocates. For they
were discussing, not a speculative matter, but a matter which
had a direct and practical connection with the most momentous
and exciting disputes of their own day. From the commence-
ment of the long contest between the Parliament and the
Stuarts down to the time when the pretensions of the Stuarts
ceased to be formidable, few questions were practically more
important than the question whether the administration of that
family had or had not been in accordance with the ancient
constitution of the kingdom. This question could be decided
only by reference to the records of preceding reigns. Bracton
and Fleta, the Mirror of Justice and the Rolls of Parhament,
were ransacked to find pretexts for the excesses of the Star
Chamber on one side, and of the High Court of Justice on the
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 2 I
Other. During a long course of years every Whig historian
was anxious to prove that the old English government was all
but republican, every Tory historian to prove that it was all but
despotic.
With such feelings, both parties looked into the chronicles
of the middle ages. Both readily found what they sought ;
and both obstinately refused to see anything but what they
sought. The champions of the Stuarts could easily point
out instances of oppression exercised on the subject. The
defenders of the Roundheads could as easily produce instances
of determined and successful resistance offered to the Crown.
The Tories quoted, from ancient writings, expressions almost
as servile as were heard from the pulpit of Mainwaring. The
Whigs discovered expressions as bold and severe as any that
resounded from the judgment seat of Bradshaw. One set of
writers adduced numerous instances in which Kings had
extorted money without the authority of Parliament. Another
set cited cases in which the Parliament had assumed to itself
the power of inflicting punishment on Kings. Those who saw
only one half of the evidence would have concluded that the
Plantagenets were as absolute as the Sultans of Turkey : those
who saw only the other half would have concluded that the
Plantagenets had as little real power as the Doges of Venice ; and
both conclusions would have been equally remote from the truth.
The old English government was one of a class of limited
monarchies which sprang up in Western Europe during the
middle ages, and which, notwithstanding many diversities, bore
to one another a strong family likeness. That there should
have been such a likeness is not strange. The countries in
which those monarchies arose had been provinces of the same
great civilised empire, and had been overrun and conquered,
about the same time, by tribes of the same rude and warlike
nation. They were members of the same great coalition
against Islam. They were in communion with the same superb
and ambitious Church. Their polity naturally took the same
form. They had institutions derived partly from imperial
Rome, partly from papal Rome, partly from the old
Germany. All had Kings ; and in all the kingly ofiice became
by degrees strictly hereditary. All had nobles bearing titles
which had originally indicated military rank. The dignity of
knighthood, the rules of heraldry, were common to all. All had
richly endowed ecclesiastical establishments, municipal cor-
porations enjoying large franchises, and senates whose consent
was necessary to the validity of some public acts.
22 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Of these kindred constitutions the English was, from an early
period, justly reputed the best. The prerogatives of the
sovereign were undoubtedly extensive. The spirit of religion,
and the spirit of chivalry, concurred to exalt his dignity. The
sacred oil had been poured on his head. It was no disparage-
ment to the bravest and noblest knights to kneel at his feet.
His person was inviolable. He alone was entitled to convoke
the Estates of the realm : he could at his pleasure dismiss
them ; and his assent was necessary to all their legislative acts.
He was the chief of the executive administration, the sole
organ of communication with foreign powers, the captain of the
military and naval forces of the state, the fountain of justice, of
mercy, and of honour. He had large powers for the regulation
of trade. It was by him that money was coined, that weights
and measures were fixed, that marts and havens were appointed.
His ecclesiastical patronage was immense. His hereditary
revenues, economically administered, sufficed to meet the
ordinary charges of government. His own domains were of
vast extent. He was also feudal lord paramount of the whole
soil of his kingdom, and, in that capacity, possessed many
lucrative and many formidable rights, which enabled him to
annoy and depress those who thwarted him, and to enrich
and aggrandise, without any cost to himself, those who enjoyed
his favour.
But his power, though ample, was limited by three great
constitutional principles, so ancient that none can say when
they began to exist, so potent that their natural development,
continued through many generations, has produced the order
of things under which we now live.
First, the King could not legislate without the consent of his
Parliament. Secondly, he could impose no taxes without the
consent of his Parliament. Thirdly, he was bound to conduct
the executive administration according to the laws of the land,
and, if he broke those laws, his advisers and his agents were
responsible.
No candid Tory will deny that these principles had, five
hundred years ago, acquired the authority of fundamental rules.
On the other hand, no candid Whig will affirm that they were,
till a later period, cleared from all ambiguity, or followed out
to all their consequences. A constitution of the middle ages
was not, like a constitution of the eighteenth or nineteenth
century, created entire by a single act, and fully set forth in
a single document. It is only in a refined and specula-
tive age that a polity is constructed on system. In rude
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 23
societies the progress of government resembles the progress of
language and of versification. Rude societies have language,
and often copious and energetic language : but they have no
scientific grammar, no definitions of nouns and verbs, no names
for declensions, moods, tenses, and voices. Rude societies
have versification, and often versification of great power and
sweetness : but they have no metrical canons ; and the minstrel
whose numbers, regulated solely by his ear, are the delight of
his audience, would himself be unable to say of how many
dactyls and trochees each of his lines consists. As eloquence
exists before syntax, and song before prosody, so government
may exist in a high degree of excellence long before the limits
of legislative, executive, and judicial power have been traced
with precision.
It was thus in our country. The line which bounded the
royal prerogative, though in general sufficiently clear, had not
everywhere been drawn with accuracy and distinctness. There
was, therefore, near the border some debatable ground on
which incursions and reprisals continued to take place, till,
after ages of strife, plain and durable landmarks were at length
set up. It may be instructive to note in what way, and to what
extent, our ancient sovereigns were in the habit of violating
the three great principles by which the liberties of the nation
were protected.
No English King has ever laid claim to the general legisla-
tive power. The most violent and imperious Plantagenet
never fancied himself competent to enact, without the consent
of his great council, that a jury should consist of ten persons
instead of twelve, that a widow's dower should be a fourth part
instead of a third, that perjury should be a felony, or that the
custom of gavelkind should be introduced into Yorkshire.*
But the King had the power of pardoning offenders ; and there
is one point at which the power of pardoning and the power
of legislating seem to fade into each other, and may easily, at
least in a simple age, be confounded. A penal statute is
virtually annulled if the penalties which it imposes are regularly
remitted as often as they are incurred. The sovereign was
undoubtedly competent to remit penalties without limit. He
was therefore competent to annul virtually a penal statute. It
might seem that there could be no serious objection to his
domg formally what he might do virtually. Thus, with the
help of subtle and courtly lawyers, grew up, on the doubtful
* This is excellently put by Mr. Hallam in the first chapter of his
Constitutional History.
B34
24 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
frontier which separates executive from legislative functions,
that great anomaly known as the dispensing power.
That the King could not impose taxes without the consent
of Parhament is admitted to have been, from time immemorial,
a fundamental law of England. It was among the articles
which John was compelled by the Barons to sign. Edward
the First ventured to break through the rule : but, able, power-
ful, and popular as he was, he encountered an opposition
to which he found it expedient to yield. He covenanted
accordingly in express terms, for himself and his heirs, that
they would never again levy any aid without the assent and
good-will of the Estates of the realm. His powerful and
victorious grandson attempted to violate this solemn compact :
but the attempt was strenuously withstood. At length the
Plantagenets gave up the point in despair ; but though they
ceased to infringe the law openly, they occasionally contrived,
by evading it, to procure an extraordinary supply for a tem-
porary purpose. They were interdicted from taxing ; but they
claimed the right of begging and borrowing. They therefore
sometimes begged in a tone not to be distinguished from that
of command, and sometimes borrowed with small thought of
repaying. But the fact that it was thought necessary to dis-
guise these exactions under the names of benevolences and
loans sufficiently proves that the authority of the great con-
stitutional rule was universally recognised.
The principle that the King of England was bound to con-
duct the administration according to law, and that, if he did
anything against law, his advisers and agents were answerable,
was established at a very early period, as the severe judgments
pronounced and executed on many royal favourites sufficiently
prove. It is, however, certain that the rights of individuals
were often violated by the Plantagenets, and that the injured
parties were often unable to obtain redress. According to law
no Englishman could be arrested or detained in confinement
merely by the mandate of the sovereign. In fact, persons
obnoxious to the government were frequently imprisoned with-
out any other authority than a royal order. According to law,
torture, the disgrace of the Roman jurisprudence, could not,
in any circumstances, be inflicted on an English subject.
Nevertheless, during the troubles of the fifteenth century, a
rack was introduced into the Tower, and was occasionally used
under the plea of political necessity. But it would be a great
error to infer from such irregularities that the English
monarchs were, either in theory or in practice, absolute. We
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 2 5
live in a highly civilised society, in which intelligence is so
rapidly diffused by means of the press and of the post office,
that any gross act of oppression committed in any part of our
island is, in a few hours, discussed by millions. If the
sovereign were now to immure a subject in defiance of the writ
of Habeas Corpus, or to put a conspirator to the torture, the
whole nation would be instantly electrified by the news. In
the middle ages the state of society was widely different.
Rarely and with great difficulty did the wrongs of individuals
come to the knowledge of the public. A man might be
illegally confined during many months in the castle of Carlisle
or Norwich ; and no whisper of the transaction might reach
London. It is highly probable that the rack had been many
years in use before the great majority of the nation had the
least suspicion that it was ever employed. Nor were our
ancestors by any means so much alive as we are to the import-
ance of maintaining great general rules. We have been taught
by long experience that we cannot without danger suffer any
breach of the constitution to pass unnoticed. It is therefore
now universally held that a government which unnecessarily
exceeds its powers ought to be visited with severe parliament-
ary censure, and that a government which, under the pressure
of a great exigency, and with pure intentions, has exceeded its
powers, ought without delay to apply to Parliament for an act
of indemnity. But such were were not the feelings of the
Englishmen of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. They
were little disposed to contend for a principle merely as a
principle, or to cry out against an irregularity which was not
also felt to be a grievance. As long as the general spirit of
the administration was mild and popular, they were willing to
allow some latitude to their sovereign. If, for ends generally
acknowledged to be good, he exerted a vigour beyond the law,
they not only forgave, but applauded him, and, while they en-
joyed security and prosperity under his rule, were but too ready
to believe that whoever had incurred his displeasure had
deserved it. But to this indulgence there was a limit : nor was
that King wise who presumed far on the forbearance of the
English people. They might sometimes allow him to overstep
the constitutional line ; but they also claimed the privilege of
overstepping that line themselves, whenever his encroachments
were so serious as to excite alarm. If, not content with
occasionally oppressing individuals, he dared to oppress great
masses, his subjects promptly appealed to the laws, and, that
appeal failing, appealed as promptly to the God of battles.
2 6 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
They might indeed safely tolerate a king in a few excesses ;
for they had in reserve a check which soon brought the fiercest
and proudest king to reason, the check of physical force. It
is difficult for an Englishman of the nineteenth century to
image to himself the facility and rapidity with which, four
hundred years ago, this check was applied. The people have
long unlearned the use of arms. The art of war has been
carried to a perfection unknown to our forefathers, and the
knowledge of that art is confined to a particular class. A
hundred thousand troops, well disciplined and commanded,
will keep down millions of ploughmen and artisans. A few
regiments of household troops are sufficient to overawe all the
discontented spirits of a large capital. In the meantime the
effect of the constant progress of wealth has been to make
insurrection far more terrible to thinking men than maladminis-
tration. Immense sums have been expended on works which,
if a rebellion broke out, might perish in a few hours. The
mass of moveable wealth collected in the shops and warehouses
of London alone exceeds five-hundredfold that which the whole
island contained in the days of the Plantagenets ; and, if the
government were subverted by physical force, all this moveable
wealth would be exposed to imminent risk of spoliation and
destruction. Still greater would be the risk to public credit,
on which thousands of families directly depend for subsistence,
and with which the credit of the whole commercial world is
inseparably connected. It is no exaggeration to say that a
civil war of a week on English ground would now produce
disasters which would be felt from the Hoangho to the Missouri,
and of which the traces would be discernible at the distance of
a century. In such a state of society resistance must be
regarded as a cure more desperate than almost any malady
which can afflict the state. In the middle ^ges, on the contrary,
resistance was an ordinary remedy for political distempers, a
remedy which was always at hand, and which, though doubtless
shairp at the moment, produced no deep or lasting ill effects.
If a popular chief raised his standard in a popular cause, an
irregular army could be assembled in a day. Regular army
there was none. Every man had a slight tincture of soldier-
ship, and scarcely any man more than a slight tincture. The
national wealth consisted chiefly in flocks and herds, in the
harvest of the year, and in the simple buildings inhalDited by
the people. All the furniture, the stock of shops, the machin-
ery which could be found in the realm was of less value than
the property which some single parishes now contain, Manu-
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 2 7
factures were rude ; credit was almost unknown. Society,
therefore, recovered from the shock as soon as the actual con-
flict was over. The calamities of civil war were confined to the
slaughter on the field of battle, and to a few subsequent execu-
tions and confiscations. In a week the peasant was driving his
team and the esquire flying his hawks over the field of Towton,
or of Bosworth, as if no extraordinary event had interrupted the
regular course of human life.
A hundred and sixty years have now elapsed since the
English people have by force subverted a government. During
the hundred and sixty years which preceded the union of the
Roses, nine Kings reigned in England. Six of these nine
Kings were deposed. Five lost their lives as well as their
crowns. It is evident, therefore, that any comparison between
our ancient and our modern polity must lead to most
erroneous conclusions, unless large allowance be made
for the effect of that restraint which resistance and the fear of
resistance constantly imposed on the Plantagenets. As our
ancestors had against tyranny a most important security which
we want, they might safely dispense with some securities to
which we justly attach the highest importance. As we cannot,
without the risk of evils from which the imagination recoils,
employ physical force as a check on misgovernment, it is
evidently our wisdom to keep all the constitutional checks on
misgovernment in the highest state of efficiency, to watch with
jealousy the first beginnings of encroachment, and never to
suffer irregularities, even when harmless in themselves, to pass
unchallenged, lest they acquire the force of precedents. Four
hundred years ago such minute vigilance might seem unneces-
sary. A nation of hardy archers and spearmen might, with
small risk to its liberties, connive at some illegal acts on the
part of a prince whose general administration was good, and
whose throne was not defended by a single company of regular
soldiers.
Under this system, rude as it may appear when compared with
those elaborate constitutions of which the last seventy years
have been fruitful, the English long enjoyed a large measure of
freedom and happiness. Though during the feeble reign of
Henry the Sixth the state was torn first by factions, and at
length by civil war, though Edward the Fourth was a prince of
dissolute and imperious character, though Richard the Third
has generally been represented as a monster of depravity,
though the exactions of Henry the Seventh caused great
repining, it is certain that our ancestors, under those Kings,
2 8 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
were far better governed than the Belgians under PhiHp, sur-
named the Good, or the French under that Lewis who was
styled the Father of his people. Even while the wars of the
Roses were actually raging, our country appears to have been in
a happier condition than the neighbouring realms during years
of profound peace. Comines was one of the most enlightened
statesmen of his time. He had seen all the richest and most
highly civilised parts of the Continent. He had lived in the
opulent towns of Flanders, the Manchesters and Liverpools
of the fifteenth century. He had visited Florence, recently
adorned by the magnificence of Lorenzo, and Venice, not yet
humbled by the confederates of Cambray. This eminent man
deliberately pronounced England to be the best governed
country of which he had any knowledge. Her constitution he
emphatically designated as a just and holy thing, which, while
it protected the people, really strengthened the hands of a
prince who respected it. In no other country, he said, were
men so effectually secured from wrong. The calamities
produced by our intestine wars seemed to him to be confined
to the nobles and the fighting men, and to leave no traces such
as he had been accustomed to see elsewhere, no ruined
dweUings, no depopulated cities.
It was not only by the efficiency of the restraints imposed on
the royal prerogative that England was advantageously
distinguished from most of the neighbouring countries. A
peculiarity equally important, though less noticed, was the
relation in which the nobiUty stood here to the commonalty.
There was a strong hereditary aristocracy : but it was of all
hereditary aristocracies the least insolent and exclusive. It
had none of the invidious character of a caste. It was con-
stantly receiving members from the people and constantly
sending down members to mingle with the people. Any
gentleman might become a peer. The younger son of a peer
was but a gentleman. Grandsons of peers yielded precedence
to newly made knights. The dignity of knighthood was not
beyond the reach of any man who could by diligence and thrift
realise a good estate, or who could attract notice by his valour
in a battle or a siege. It was regarded as no disparagement for
the daughter of a Duke, nay of a royal Duke, to espouse a
distinguished commoner. Thus, Sir John Howard married the
daughter of Thomas Mowbray Duke of Norfolk. Sir Richard
Pole married the Countess of Salisbury, daughter of George
Duke of Clarence. Good blood was indeed held in high
respect ; but between good blood and the privileges of peerage
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 1^
there was, most fortunately for our country, no necessary con-
nection. Pedigrees as long, and scutcheons as old, were to be
found out of the House of Lords as in it. There were new
men who bore the highest titles. There were untitled men
well known to be descended from knights who had broken the
Saxon ranks at Hastings, and scaled the walls of Jerusalem.
There were Bohuns, Mowbrays, De Veres, nay kinsmen of the
House of Plantagenet, with no higher addition than that
of esquire, and with no civil privileges beyond those enjoyed
by every farmer and shopkeeper. There was therefore here no
line like that which in some other countries divided the
patrician from the plebeian. The yeoman was not inclined to
murmur at dignities to which his own children might rise.
The grandee was not inclined to insult a class into which his
own children must descend.
After the wars of York and Lancaster, the links which connected
the nobility and the commonalty became closer and more
numerous than ever. The extent of the destruction which had
fallen on the old aristocracy may be inferred from a single
circumstance. In the year 145 1 Henry the Sixth summoned
fifty-three temporal Lords to parliament. The temporal Lords
summoned by Henry the Seventh to the parliament of 1485
were only twenty-nine, and of these twenty-nine several had
recently been elevated to the peerage. During the following
century the ranks of the nobility were largely recruited from
among the gentry. The constitution of the House of Commons
tended greatly to promote the salutary intermixture of classes.
The knight of the shire was the connecting link between the
baron and the shopkeeper. On the same benches on which
sate the goldsmiths, drapers, and grocers who had been
returned to parliament by the commercial towns, sate also
members who, in any other country, would have been called
noblemen, hereditary lords of manors, entitled to hold courts
and to bear coat armour, and able to trace back an honourable
descent through many generations. Some of them were
younger sons and brothers of lords. Others could boast of even
royal blood. At length the eldest son of an Earl of Bedford,
called in courtesy by the second title of his father, offered
himself as candidate for a seat in the House of Commons, and
his example was followed by others. Seated in that house, the
heirs of the great peers naturally became as zealous for its
privileges as any of the humble burgesses with whom they were
mingled. Thus our democracy was, from an early period, the
most aristocratic, and our aristocracy the most democratic in
30 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
the world ; a peculiarity which has lasted down to the present
day, and which has produced many important moral and
political effects.
The government of Henry the Seventh, of his son, and of his
grandchildren was, on the whole, more arbitrary than that of
the Plantagenets. Personal character may in some degree
explain the difference; for courage and force of will were
common to all the men and women of the House of Tudor.
They exercised their power during a period of a hundred and
twenty years, always with vigour, often with violence, some-
times with cruelty. They, in imitation of the dynasty which
had preceded them, occasionally invaded the rights of the
subject, occasionally exacted taxes under the name of loans
and gifts, and occasionally dispensed with penal statutes ; nay,
though they never presumed to enact any permanent law by
their own authority, they occasionally took upon themselves,
when Parliament was not sitting, to meet temporary exigencies
by temporary edicts. It was, however, impossible for the
Tudors to carry oppression beyond a certain point : for they
had no armed force, and they were surrounded by an armed
people. The palace was guarded by a few domestics whom
the array of a single shire, or of a single ward of London, could
with ease have overpowered. These haughty princes were
therefore under a restraint stronger than any which mere laws
can impose, under a restraint which did not, indeed, prevent
them from sometimes treating an individual in an arbitrary and
even in a barbarous manner, but which effectually secured the
nation against general and long continued oppression. They
might safely be tyrants within the precinct of the court : but it
was necessary for them to watch with constant anxiety the
temper of the country. Henry the Eighth, for example,
encountered no opposition when he wished to send Bucking-
ham and Surrey, Anne Boleyn and Lady Salisbury, to the
scaffold. But when, without the consent of Parliament, he
demanded of his subjects a contribution amounting to one
sixth of their goods, he soon found it necessary to retract.
The cry of hundreds of thousands was that they were English
and not French, freemen and not slaves. In Kent the royal
commissioners fled for their lives. In Suffolk four thousand
men appeared in arms. The King's lieutenants in that county
vainly exerted themselves to raise an army. Those who did
not join in the insurrection declared that they would not fight
against their brethren in such a quarrel. Henry, proud and
selfwilled as he was, shrank, not without reason, from a conflict
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 3 I
with the roused spirit of the nation. He had before his eyes
the fate of his predecessors who had perished at Berkeley and
Pomfret. He not only cancelled his illegal commissions ; he
not only granted a general pardon to all the malecontents ; but
he publicly and solemnly apologized for his infraction of the
laws.
His conduct, on this occasion, well illustrates the whole
policy of his house. The temper of the princes of that line was
hot, and their spirit high : but they understood the character
of the nation which they governed, and never once, like some
of their predecessors, and some of their successors, carried
obstinacy to a fatal point. The discretion of the Tudors was
such, that their power, though it was often resisted, was never
subverted. The reign of every one of them was disturbed by
formidable discontents : but the government never failed either
to sooth the mutineers, or to conquer and punish them.
Sometimes, by timely concessions, it succeeded in averting civil
hostilities ; but in general it stood firm, and called for help on
the nation. The nation obeyed the call, rallied round the
sovereign, and enabled him to quell the disaffected minority.
Thus, from the age of Henry the Third to the age ot
Elizabeth, England grew and flourished under a polity which
contained the germ of our present institutions, and which,
though not very exactly defined, or very exactly observed, was
yet effectually prevented from degenerating into despotism, by
the awe in which the governors stood of the spirit and strength
of the governed.
But such a polity is suited only to a particular stage in the
progress of society. The same causes which produce a division
of labour in the peaceful arts must at length make war a
distinct science and a distinct trade. A time arrives when the
use of arms begins to occupy the entire attention of a separate
class. It soon appears that peasants and burghers, however
brave, are unable to stand their ground against veteran soldiers,
whose whole life is a preparation for the day of battle, whose
nerves have been braced by long familiarity with danger, and
whose movements have all the precision of clockwork. It is felt
that the defence of nations can no longer be safely entrusted to
warriors taken from the plough or the loom for a campaign of
forty days. If any state forms a great regular army, the border-
ing states must imitate the example, or must submit to a
foreign yoke. But, where a great regular army exists, limited
monarchy, such as it was in the middle ages, can exist no
longer. The sovereign is at once emancipated from what had
*B34
32 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
been the chief restraint on his power ; and he inevitably
becomes absolute, unless he is subjected to checks such as
would be superfluous in a society where all are soldiers
occasionally, and none permanently.
With the danger came also the means of escape. In the
monarchies of the middle ages the power of the sword belonged
to the prince, but the power of the purse belonged to the nation ;
and the progress of civilisation, as it made the sword of the prince
more and more formidable to the nation, made the purse of the
nation more and more necessary to the prince. His hereditary
revenues would no longer sufifice, even for the expenses of civil
government. It was utterly impossible that, without a regular
and extensive system of taxation, he could keep in constant
efficiency a great body of disciplined troops. The policy which
the parliamentary assemblies of Europe ought to have adopted
was to take their stand firmly on their constitutional right to
give or withhold money, and resolutely to refuse funds for the
support of armies, till ample securities had been provided
against despotism.
This wise policy was followed in our country alone. In the
neighbouring kingdoms great military establishments were
formed ; no new safeguards for public liberty were devised ;
and the consequence was, that the old parliamentary institutions
everywhere ceased to exist. In France, where they had always
been feeble, they languished, and at length died of mere weak-
ness. In Spain, where they had been as strong as in any part
of Europe, they struggled fiercely for life, but struggled too
late. The mechanics of Toledo and Valladolid vainly
defended the privileges of the Castilian Cortes against the
veteran battalions of Charles the Fifth. As vainly, in the next
generation, did the citizens of Saragossa stand up against Philip
the Second, for the old constitution of Aragon. One after
another, the great national councils of the continental
monarchies, councils once scarcely less proud and powerful
than those which sate at Westminster, sank into utter in-
significance. If they met, they met merely as our Convocation
now meets, to go through some venerable forms.
In England events took a different course. This singular
felicity she owed chiefly to her insular situation. Before the
end of the fifteenth century great military establishments were
indispensable to the dignity, and even to the safety, of the
French and Spanish monarchies. If either of those two powers
had disarmed, it would soon have been compelled to submit
to the dictation of the other. But England, protected by the
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 33
sea against invasion, and rarely engaged in warlike operations
on the Continent, was not, as yet, under the necessity of
employing regular troops. The sixteenth century, the seven-
teenth century, found her still without a standing army. At
the commencement of the seventeenth century political science
had made considerable progress. The fate of the Spanish Cortes
and of the French States General, had given solemn warning
to our Parliaments ; and our Parliaments, fully aware of the
nature and magnitude of the danger, adopted, in good time,
a system of tactics which, after a contest protracted through
three generations, was at length successful.
Almost every writer who has treated of that contest has been
desirous to show that his own party was the party which was
struggling to preserve the old constitution unaltered. The
truth however is that the old constitution could not be preserved
unaltered. A law, beyond the control of human wisdom, had
decreed that there should no longer be governments of that
peculiar class which, in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,
had been common throughout Europe. The question, there-
fore, was not whether our polity should undergo a change, but
what the nature of the change should be. The introduction
of a new and mighty force had disturbed the old equilibrium,
and had turned one limited monarchy after another into an abso-
lute monarchy. What had happened elsewhere would assuredly
have happened here, unless the balance had been redressed by
a great transfer of power from the crown to the parliament.
Our princes were about to have at their command means
of coercion such as no Plantagenet or Tudor had ever possessed.
They must inevitably have become despots, unless they had
been, at the same time, placed under restraints to which no
Plantagenet or Tudor had ever been subject.
It seems certain, therefore, that, had none but political
causes been at work, the seventeenth century would not have
passed away without a fierce conflict between our Kings and
their Parliaments. But other causes of perhaps greater
potency contributed to produce the same effect. While the
government of the Tudors was in its highest vigour took place
an event which has coloured the destinies of all Christian
nations, and in an especial manner the destinies of England.
Twice during the middle ages the mind of Europe had risen
up against the domination of Rome. The first insurrection
broke out in the south of France. The energy of Innocent
the Third, the zeal of the young orders of Francis and Dominic,
and the ferocity of the Crusaders whom the priesthood let loose
34 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
on an unwarlike population, crushed the Albigensian churches.
The second reformation had its origin in England and spread
to Bohemia. The Council of Constance, by removing some
ecclesiastical disorders which had given scandal to Christendom,
and the princes of Europe, by unsparingly using fire and
sword against the heretics, succeeded in arresting and turning
back the movement. Nor is this much to be regretted. The
sympathies of a Protestant, it is true, will naturally be on the
side of the Albigensians and of the Lollards. Yet an en-
lightened and temperate Protestant will perhaps be disposed
to doubt whether the success, either of the Albigensians or of
the Lollards, would, on the whole, have promoted the happiness
and virtue of mankind. Corrupt as the Church of Rome was,
there is reason to believe that, if that Church had been over-
thrown in the twelfth or even in the fourteenth century, the'
vacant space would have been occupied by some system more
corrupt still. There was then, through the greater part of
Europe, very little knowledge, and that little was confined to
the clergy. Not one man in five hundred could have spelled
his way through a psalm. Books were few and costly. The
art of printing was unknown. Copies of the Bible, inferior in
beauty and clearness to those which every cottager may now
command, sold for prices which many priests could not afford
to give. It was obviously impossible that the laity should
search the Scriptures for themselves. It is probable therefore,
that, as soon as they had put off one spiritual yoke, they
would have put on another, and that the power lately exercised
by the clergy of the Church of Rome would have passed to a
far worse class of teachers. The sixteenth century was com-
paratively a time of light. Yet even in the sixteenth century
a considerable number of those who quitted the old religion
followed the first confident and plausible guide who offered
himself, and were soon led into errors far more serious than
those which they had renounced. Thus Matthias and Kniper-
doling, apostles of lust, robbery, and murder, were able for a
time to rule great cities. In a darker age such false prophets
might have founded empires ; and Christianity might have
been distorted into a cruel and licentious superstition, more
noxious, not only than Popery, but even than Islamism.
About a hundred years after the rising of the Council of
Constance, that great change emphatically called the Reforma-
tion began. The fulness of time was now come. The clergy
were no longer the sole or the chief depositories of knowledge.
The invention of printing had furnished the assailants of the
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 35
Church with a mighty weapon which had been wanting to
their predecessors. The study of the ancient writers, the
rapid development of the powers of the modern languages, the
unprecedented activity which was displayed in every department
of literature, the political state of Europe, the vices of the
Roman court, the exactions of the Roman chancery, the
jealousy with which the wealth and privileges of the clergy
were naturally regarded by laymen, the jealousy with which
the Italian ascendency was naturally regarded by men born on
our side of the Alps, all these things gave to the teachers of
the new theology an advantage which they perfectly understood
how to use.
Those who hold that the influence of the Church of Rome
in the dark ages was, on the whole, beneficial to mankind may
yet with perfect consistency regard the Reformation as an
inestimable blessing. The leading strings, which preserve and
uphold the infant, would impede the full grown man. And so
the very means by which the human mind is, in one stage of
its progress, supported and propelled, may, in another stage,
be mere hindrances. There is a point in the life both of an
individual and of a society, at which submission and faith,
such as at a later period would be justly called servility and
credulity, are useful qualities. The child who teachably and
undoubtingly listens to the instructions of his elders is likely
to improve rapidly. But the man who should receive with
childlike docility every assertion and dogma uttered by another
man no wiser than himself would become contemptible. It is
the same with communities. The childhood of the European
nations was passed under the tutelage of the clergy. The
ascendency of the sacerdotal order was long the ascendency
which naturally and properly belongs to intellectual superiority.
The priests, with all their faults, were by far the wisest portion
of society. It was, therefore, on the whole, good that they
should be respected and obeyed. The encroachments of the
ecclesiastical power on the province of the civil power pro-
duced much more happiness than misery, while the ecclesiastical
power was in the hands of the only class that had studied
history, philosophy, and public law, and while the civil power
was in the hands of savage chiefs, who could not read their
own grants and edicts. But a change took place. Knowledge
gradually spread among laymen. At the commencement of
the sixteenth century many of them were in every intellectual
attainment fully equal to the most enlightened of their spiritual
pastors. Thenceforward that dominion, which, during the
26 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
dark ages, had been, in spite of many abuses, a legitimate and
a salutary guardianship, became an unjust and noxious tyranny.
From the time when the barbarians overran the Western
Empire to the time of the revival of letters, the influence of
the Church of Rome had been generally favourable to science,
to civilisation, and to good government. But during the last
three centuries, to stunt the growth of the human mind has
been her chief object. Throughout Christendom, whatever
advance has been made in knowledge, in freedom, in wealth,
and in the arts of life, has been made in spite of her, and has
everywhere been in inverse proportion to her power. The
loveliest and most fertile provinces of Europe have, under her
rule, been sunk in poverty, in political servitude, and in
intellectual torpor, while Protestant countries, once proverbial
for sterility and barbarism, have been turned by skill and
industry into gardens, and can boast of a long list of heroes
and statesmen, philosophers and poets. Whoever, knowing
what Italy and Scotland naturally are, and what, four hundred
years ago, they actually were, shall now compare the country
round Rome with the country round Edinburgh, will be able
to form some judgment as to the tendency of Papal domination.
The descent of Spain, once the first among monarchies, to the
lowest depths of degradation, the elevation of Holland, in
spite of many natural disadvantages, to a position such as no
commonwealth so small has ever reached, teach the same
lesson. Whoever passes in Germany from a Roman Catholic
to a Protestant principality, in Switzerland from a Roman
Catholic to a Protestant canton, in Ireland from a Roman
Catholic to a Protestant county, finds that he has passed from
a lower to a higher grade of civilisation. On the other side of
the Atlantic the same law prevails. The Protestants of the
United States have left far behind them the Roman Catholics
of Mexico, Peru, and Brazil. The Roman Catholics of Lo'ver
Canada remain inert, while the whole continent round them is
in a ferment with Protestant activity and enterprise. The
French have doubtless shown an energy and an intelligence
which, even when misdirected, have justly entitled them to be
called a great people. But this apparent exception, when
examined, will be found to confirm the rule ; for in no comitry
that is called Roman Catholic has the Roman Catholic
Church, during several generations, possessed so little authority
as in France.
It is difficult to say whether England owes more to the
Roman Catholic religion or to the Reformation. For the
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 37
amalgamation of races and for the abolition of villenage, she is
chiefly indebted to the influence which the priesthood in the
middle ages exercised over the laity. For political and in-
tellectual freedom, and for all the blessings which political and
intellectual freedom have brought in their train, she is chiefly
indebted to the great rebellion of the laity against the priesthood.
The struggle between the old and the new theology in our
country was long, and the event sometimes seemed doubtful.
There were two extreme parties, prepared to act with violence
or to suffer with stubborn resolution. Between them lay,
during a considerable time, a middle party, which blended, very
illogically, but by no means unnaturally, lessons learned in the
nursery with the sermons of the modern evangelists, and, while
clinging with fondness to old observances, yet detested abuses
with which those observances were closely connected. Men in
such a frame of mind were willing to obey, almost with thank-
fulness, the dictation of an able ruler who spared them the
trouble of judging for themselves, and, raising a firm and com-
manding voice above the uproar of controversy, told them
how to worship and what to believe. It is not strange, there-
fore, that the Tudors should have been able to exercise a great
influence on ecclesiastical affairs ; nor is it strange that their
influence should, for the most part, have been exercised with a
view to their own interest.
Henry the Eighth attempted to constitute an Anglican
Church differing from the Roman Catholic Church on the
point of supremacy, and on that point alone. His success in
this attempt was extraordinary. The force of his character,
the singularly favourable situation in which he stood with
respect to foreign powers, the immense wealth which the
spoliation of the abbeys placed at his disposal, and the support
of that class which still halted between two opinions, enabled
him to bid defiance to both the extreme parties, to burn as
heretics those who avowed the tenets of the Reformers, and to
hang as traitors those who owned the authority of the Pope.
But Henry's system died with him. Had his life been
prolonged, he would have found it difficult to maintain a
position assailed with equal fury by all who were zealous
either for the new or for the old opinions. The ministers who
held the royal prerogatives in trust for his infant son could not
venture to persist in so hazardous a policy ; nor could Elizabeth
venture to return to it. It was necessary to make a choice.
The government must either submit to Rome, or must obtain
the aid of the Protestants. The government and the
38 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Protestants had only one thing in common, hatred of the Papal
power. The English reformers were eager to go as far as their
brethren on the Continent They unanimously condemned as
Anti-christian numerous dogmas and practices to which Henry
had stubbornly adhered, and which Elizabeth reluctantly
abandoned. Many felt a strong regugnance even to things
indifferent which had formed part of the polity or ritual of the
mystical Babylon. Thus Bishop Hooper, who died manfully
at Gloucester for his religion, long refused to wear the episcopal
vestments. Bishop Ridley, a martyr of still greater renown,
pulled down the ancient altars of his diocese, and ordered the
Eucharist to be administered in the middle of churches, at
tables which the Papists irreverently termed oyster boards.
Bishop Jewel pronounced the clerical garb to be a stage dress,
a fool's coat, a relique of the Amorites, and promised that he
would spare no labour to extirpate such degrading absurdities.
Archbishop Grindal long hesitated about accepting a mitre from
dislike of what he regarded as the mummery of consecration.
Bishop Parkhurst uttered a fervent prayer that the Church of
England would propose to herself the Church of Zurich as
the absolute pattern of a Christian community. Bishop
Ponet was of opinion that the word Bishop should be
abandoned to the Papists, and that the chief officers of the
purified church should be called Superintendents. When it is
considered that none of these prelates belonged to the extreme
section of the Protestant party, it cannot be doubted that, if
the general sense of that party had been followed, the work of
reform would have been carried on as unsparingly in England
as in Scotland.
But, as the government needed the support of the Protestants,
so the Protestants needed the protection of the government.
Much was therefore given up on both sides ; an union was
effected; and the fruit of that union was the Church of
England.
To the peculiarities of this great institution, and to the strong
passions which it has called forth in the minds both of friends
and of enemies, are to be attributed many of the most
important events which have, since the Reformation, taken
place in our country ; nor can the secular history of England
be at all understood by us, unless we study it in constant con-
nection with the history of her ecclesiastical polity.
The man who took the chief part in settling the conditions
of the alliance which produced the Anglican Church was
Thomas Cranmer. He was the representative of both the
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 29
parties which, at that time, needed each other's assistance.
He was at once a divine and a courtier. In his character of
divine he was perfectly ready to go as far in the way of change as
any Swiss or Scottish reformer. In his character of courtier he
was desirous to preserve that organization which had, during
many ages, admirably served the purposes of the Bishops of
Rome, and might be expected now to serve equally well the
purposes of the English Kings and of their ministers. His tem-
per and his understanding eminently fitted him to act as
mediator. Saintly in his professions, unscrupulous in his deal-
ings, zealous for nothing, bold in speculation, a coward and a
timeserver in action, a placable enemy and a lukewarm friend,
he was in every way qualified to arrange the terms of the coalition
between the religious and the worldly enemies of Popery.
To this day the constitution, the doctrines, and the services
of the Church, retain the visible marks of the compromise
from which she sprang. She occupies a middle position
between the Churches of Rome and Geneva. Her doctrinal
confessions and discourses, composed by Protestants, set forth
principles of theology in which Calvin or Knox w^ould have
found scarcely a word to disapprove. Her prayers and thanks-
givings, derived from the ancient Breviaries, are very generally
such that Cardinal Fisher or Cardinal Pole might have heartily
joined in them. A controversialist who puts an Arminian
sense on her Articles and Homilies will be pronounced by
candid men to be as unreasonable as a controversialist who
denies that the doctrine of baptismal regeneration can be dis-
covered in her Liturgy.
The Church of Rome held that episcopacy was of divine
institution, and that certain supernatural graces of a high order
had been transmitted by the imposition of hands through fifty
generations, from the Eleven who received their commission
on the Galilean mount, to the bishops who met at Trent. A
large body of Protestants, on the other hand, regarded prelacy
as positively unlawful, and persuaded themselves that they
found a very different form of ecclesiastical government pre-
scribed in Scripture. The founders of the Anglican Church
took a middle course. They retained episcopacy; but they
did not declare it to be an institution essential to the welfare of
a Christian society, or to the efficacy of the sacraments.
Cranmer, indeed, on one important occasion, plainly avowed
his conviction that, in the primitive times, there was no dis-
tinction between bishops and priests, and that the laying on of
hands was altogether superfluous.
40 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Among the Presbyterians, the conduct of public worship is,
to a great extent, left to the minister. Their prayers, therefore,
are not exactly the same in any two assemblies on the same
day, or on any two days in the same assembly. In one parish
they are fervent, eloquent, and full of meaning. In the next
parish they may be languid or absurd. The priests of the
Roman Catholic Church, on the other hand, have, during many
generations, daily chaunted the same ancient confessions,
supplications, and thanksgivings, in India and Lithuania, in
Ireland and Peru. The service, being in a dead language, is
intelligible only to the learned ; and the great majority of the
congregation may be said to assist as spectators rather than as
auditors. Here, again, the Church of England took a middle
course. She copied the Roman Catholic forms of prayer, but
translated them into the vulgar tongue, and invited the illiterate
multitude to join its voice to that of the minister.
In every part of her system the same policy may be traced.
Utterly rejecting the doctrine of transubstantiation, and
condemning as idolatrous all adoration paid to the sacramental
bread and wine, she yet, to the disgust of the Puritan, required
her children to receive the memorials of divine love, meekly
kneeling upon their knees. Discarding many rich vestments
which surrounded the altars of the ancient faith, she yet
retained, to the horror of weak minds, a robe of white linen,
typical of the purity which belonged to her as the mystical
spouse of Christ. Discarding a crowd of pantomimic gestures
which, in the Roman Catholic worship, are substituted for
intelligible words, she yet shocked many rigid Protestants by
marking the infant just sprinkled from the font with the sign of
the cross. The Roman Catholic addressed his prayers to a
multitude of Saints, among whom were numbered many men of
doubtful, and some of hateful, character. The Puritan refused
the addition of Saint even to the apostle of the Gentiles, and to
the disciple whom Jesus loved. The Church of England,
though she asked for the intercession of no created being, still
set apart days for the commemoration of some who had done
and suffered great things for the faith. She retained con-
firmation and ordination as edifying rites ; but she degraded
them from the rank of sacraments. Shrift was no part of her
system. Yet she gently invited the dying penitent to confess
his sins to a divine, and empowered her ministers to sooth the
departing soul by an absolution, which breathes the very spirit
of the old religion. In general it may be said, that she appeals
more to the understanding, and less to the senses and the
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 4 1
imagination, than the Church of Rome, and that she appeals
less to the understanding, and more to the senses and
imagination, than the Protestant Churches of Scotland, France,
and Switzerland.
Nothing, however, so strongly distinguished the Church of
England from other Churches as the relation in which she
stood to the monarchy. The King was her head. The limits
of the authority which he possessed, as such, were not traced,
and indeed have never yet been traced, with precision. The
laws which declared him supreme in ecclesiastical matters were
drawn rudely and in general terms. If, for the purpose of
ascertaining the sense of those laws, we examine the books and
lives of those who founded the English Church, our perplexity
will be increased. For the founders of the English Church
wrote and acted in an age of violent intellectual fermentation,
and of constant action and reaction. They therefore often
contradicted each other, and sometimes contradicted them-
selves. That the King was, under Christ, sole head of the
Church, was a doctrine which they all with one voice affirmed :
but those words had very different significations in different
mouths, and in the same mouth at different conjunctures.
Sometimes an authority which would have satisfied Hildebrand
was ascribed to the sovereign : then it dwindled down to an
authority little more than that which has been claimed by many
ancient English princes, who had been in constant communion
with the Church of Rome. What Henry and his favourite
councillors meant, at one time, by the supremacy, was certainly
nothing less than the whole power of the keys. The King was
to be the Pope of his kingdom, the vicar of God, the expositor
of Catholic verity, the channel of sacramental graces. He
arrogated to himself the right of deciding dogmatically what was
orthodox doctrine and what was heresy, of drawing up and
imposing confessions of faith, and of giving religious instruction
to his people. He proclaimed that all jurisdiction, spiritual as
well as temporal, was derived from him alone, and that it was
in his power to confer episcopal authority, and to take it away.
He actually ordered his seal to be put to commissions by which
bishops were appointed, who were to exercise their functions
as his deputies, and during his pleasure. According to this
system, as expounded by Cranmer, the King was the spiritual
as well as the temporal chief of the nation. In both capacities
His Highness must have lieutenants. As he appointed civil
officers to keep his seal, to collect his revenues, and to dispense
justice in his name, so he appointed divines of various ranks to
42 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
preach the gospel, and to administer the sacraments. It was
unnecessary that there should be any imposition of hands. The
King — such was the opinion of Cranmer given in the plainest
words — might, in virtue of authority derived from God, make a
priest ; and the priest so made needed no ordination whatever.
These opinions Cranmer, in spite of the opposition of less
courtly divines, followed out to every legitimate consequence.
He held that his own spiritual functions, like the secular
functions of the Chancellor and Treasurer, were at once
determined by a demise of the crown. When Henry died,
therefore, the Archbishop and his suffragans took out fresh
commissions, empowering them to ordain and to govern the
Church till the new sovereign should think fit to order other-
wise. When it was objected that a power to bind and to loose,
altogether distinct from temporal power, had been given by our
Lord to his apostles, some theologians of this school replied that
the power to bind and to loose had descended, not to the
clergy, but to the whole body of Christian men, and ought to be
exercised by the chief magistrate, as the representative of the
society. When it was objected that Saint Paul had spoken of
certain persons whom the Holy Ghost had made overseers and
shepherds of the faithful, it was answered that King Henry was
the very overseer, the very shepherd, whom the Holy Ghost
had appointed and to whom the expressions of Saint Paul
applied.*
These high pretensions gave scandal to Protestants as well as
to Catholics ; and the scandal was greatly increased when the
supremacy, which Mary had resigned back to the Pope, was
again annexed to the crown, on the accession of Elizabeth. It
seemed monstrous that a woman should be the chief bishop of
a Church in which an apostle had forbidden her even to let her
voice be heard. The Queen, therefore, found it necessary
expressly to disclaim that sacerdotal character which her father
had assumed, and which, according to Cranmer, had been
. inseparably joined, by divine ordinance, to the regal function.
When the Anglican confession of faith was revised in her
reign, the supremacy was explained in a manner somewhat
different from that which had been fashionable at the court
of Henry. Cranmer had declared, in emphatic terms, that
God had immediately committed to Christian princes the
whole cure of all their subjects, as well concerning the
administration of God's word for the cure of souls, as con-
* See a very curious paper which Strype believed to be in Gardiner's
handwriting Ecclesiastical Memorials, Book I, Chap. xvii.
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 43
cerning the ministration of things poUtical.* The thirty-seventh
article of religion, framed under Elizabeth, declares, in terms as
emphatic, that the ministering of God's word does not belong
to princes. The Queen, however, still had over the Church a
visitatorial power of vast and undefined extent. She was
entrusted by Parliament with the office of restraining and
punishing heresy and every sort of ecclesiastical abuse, and
was permitted to delegate her authority to commissioners.
The Bishops were little more than her ministers. Rather than
grant to the civil magistrate the absolute power of nominating
spiritual pastors, the Church of Rome, in the eleventh century,
set all Europe on fire. Rather than grant to the civil
magistrate the absolute power of nominating spiritual pastors,
the ministers of the Church of Scotland, in our own time,
resigned their livings by hundreds. The Church of England
had no such scruples. By the royal authority alone her
prelates were appointed. By the royal authority alone her
Convocations were summoned, regulated, prorogued, and
dissolved. Without the royal sanction her canons had no
force. One of the articles of her faith was that without the
royal consent no ecclesiastical council could lawfully assemble.
From all her judicatures an appeal lay, in the last resort, to the
sovereign, even when the question was whether an opinion
ought to be accounted heretical, or whether the administration
of a sacrament had been valid. Nor did the Church grudge
this extensive power to our princes. By them she had been
called into existence, nursed through a feeble infancy, guarded
from Papists on one side, and from Puritans on the other,
protected against Parliaments which bore her no good will, and
avenged on literary assailants whom she found it hard to
answer. Thus gratitude, hope, fear, common attachments,
common enmities, bound her to the throne. All her
traditions, all her tastes were monarchical. Loyalty became
a point of professional honour among her clergy, the
peculiar badge which distinguished them at once from
Calvinists and from Papists. Both the Calvinists and the
Papists, widely as they differed in other respects, regarded with
extreme jealousy all encroachments of the temporal power on
the domain of the spiritual power. Both Calvinists and Papists
maintained that subjects might justifiably draw the sword
against ungodly rulers. In France Calvinists resisted Charles
the Ninth : Papists resisted Henry the Fourth : both Papists
* These are Cranmer's own words. See the Appendix to Burnet's
History of the Reformation, Part I. Book III. No. 21. Question 9.
44 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
and Calvinists resisted Henry the Third. In Scotland
Calvinists led Mary captive. On the north of the Trent
Papists took arms against Elizabeth. The Church of England
meantime condemned both Calvinists and Papists, and loudly
boasted that no duty was more constantly or earnestly inculcated
by her than that of submission to princes.
The advantages which the crown derived from this close
alliance with the Established Church were great ; but they
were not without serious drawbacks. The compromise arranged
by Cranmer had from the first been considered by a large body
of Protestants as a scheme for serving two masters, as an
attempt to unite the worship of the Lord with the worship of
Baal. In the days of Edward the Sixth the scruples of this
party had repeatedly thrown great difficulties in the way of the
government. When Elizabeth came to the throne, these
difficulties were much increased. Violence naturally engenders
violence. The spirit of Protestantism was therefore far fiercer
and more intolerant after the cruelties of Mary than before
them. Many persons who were warmly attached to the new
opinions had, during the evil days, taken refuge in Switzerland
and Germany. They had been hospitably received by their
brethren in the faith, had sate at the feet of the great doctors
of Strasburg, Zurich, and Geneva, and had been, during some
years, accustomed to a more simple worship, and to a more
democratical form of church government than England had yet
seen. These men returned to their country, convinced that
the reform which had been effected under King Edward had
been far less searching and extensive than the interests of pure
religion required. But it was in vain that they attempted to
obtain any concession from Elizabeth. Indeed her system,
wherever it differed from her brother's, seemed to them to differ
for the worse. They were little disposed to submit, in matters
of faith, to any human authority. They had recently, in
reliance on their own interpretation of Scripture, risen up against
a Church strong in immemorial antiquity and catholic consent.
It was by no common exertion of intellectual energy that they
had thrown off the yoke of that gorgeous and imperial
superstition ; and it was vain to expect that, immediately
after such an emancipation, they would patiently submit to a
new spiritual tyranny. Long accustomed, when the priest
lifted up the host, to bow down with their faces to the earth,
as before a present God, they had learned to treat the mass as
an idolatrous mummery. Long accustomed to regard the
Pope as the successor of the chief of the apostles, as the bearer
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 45
of the keys of earth and heaven, they had learned to regard
him as the Beast, the Antichrist, the Man of Sin. It was not
to be expected that they would immediately transfer to an
upstart authority the homage which they had withdrawn from
the Vatican ; that they would submit their private judgment to
the authority of a Church founded on private judgment alone ;
that they would be afraid to dissent from teachers who
themselves dissented from what had lately been the universal
faith of western Christendom. It is easy to conceive the
indignation which must have been felt by bold and inquisitive
spirits, glorying in newly acquired freedom, when an institution
younger by many years than themselves, an institution which
had, under their own eyes, gradually received its form from the
passions and interests of a court, began to mimic the lofty
style of Rome.
Since these men could not be convinced, it was determined
that they should be persecuted. Persecution produced its
natural effects on them. It found them a sect : it made them
a faction. To their hatred of the Church was now added
hatred of the crown. The two sentiments were intermingled ;
and each embittered the other. The opinions of the Puritan
concerning the relation of ruler and subject were widely
different from those which were inculcated in the Homilies.
His favourite divines had, both by precept and by example,
encouraged resistance to tyrants and persecutors. His fellow
Calvinists in France, in Holland, and in Scotland, were in
arms against idolatrous and cruel princes. His notions, too,
respecting the government of the state took a tinge from his
notions respecting the government of the Church. Some of
the sarcasms which were popularly thrown on episcopacy might,
without much difficulty, be turned against royalty ; and many
of the arguments which were used to prove that spiritual power
was best lodged in a synod seemed to lead to the conclusion
that temporal power was best lodged in a parliament.
Thus, as the priest of the Established Church was, from
interest, from principle, and from passion, zealous for the
royal prerogatives, the Puritan was, from interest, from
principle, and from passion, hostile to them. The power
of the discontented sectaries was great. They were found
in every rank ; but they were strongest among the
mercantile classes in the towns, and among the small proprie-
tors in the country. Early in the reign of Elizabeth they began
to return a majority of the House of Commons. And doubt-
less, had our ancestors been then at liberty to fix their attention
46 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
entirely on domestic questions, the strife between the crown
and the Parliament would instantly have commenced. But
that was no season for internal dissensions. It might, indeed,
well be doubted, whether the firmest union among all the
orders of the state could avert the common danger by which
all were threatened. Roman Catholic Europe and reformed
Europe were struggling for death or life. France, divided
against herself, had, for a time, ceased to be of any account in
Christendom. The English Government was at the head of
the Protestant interest, and, while persecuting Presbyterians at
home, extended a powerful protection to Presbyterian Churches
abroad. At the head of the opposite party was the mightiest
prince of the age, a prince who ruled Spain, Portugal, Italy,
the Netherlands, the East and the West Indies, whose armies
repeatedly marched to Paris, and whose fleets kept the coasts
of Devonshire and Sussex in alarm. It long seemed probable
that Englishmen would have to fight desperately on English
ground for their religion and independence. Nor were they
ever for a moment free from apprehensions of some great
treason at home. For in that age it had become a point of
conscience and of honour with many men of generous natures
to sacrifice their country to their religion. A succession of
dark plots, formed by Roman Catholics against the life of the
Queen and the existence of the nation, kept society in constant
alarm. Whatever might be the faults of Elizabeth, it was plain
that, to speak humanly, the fate of the realm and of all reformed
Churches was staked on the security of her person and on the
success of her administration. To strengthen her hands was,
therefore, the first duty of a patriot and a Protestant ; and that
duty was well performed. The Puritans, even in the depths of
the prisons to which she had sent them, prayed, and with no
simulated fervour, that she might be kept from the dagger of
the assassin, that rebellion might be put down under her feet,
and that her arms might be victorious by sea and land. One
of the most stubborn of the stubborn sect, immediately after
his hand had been lopped off for an offence into which he had
been hurried by his intemperate zeal, waved his hat with the
hand which was still left him, and shouted "God save the
Queen ! " The sentiment with which these men regarded her
has descended to their posterity. The Nonconformists, rigor-
ously as she treated them, have, as a body, always venerated
her memory.*
* The Puritan historian, Neal, after censuring the cruelty with which she
treated the sect to which he belonged, concludes thus : " However, not-.
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE P.ESTORATION 47
During the greater part of her reign, therefore, the Puritans
in the House of Commons, though sometimes mutinous, felt
no disposition to array themselves in systematic opposition to
the government. But, when the defeat of the Armada, the
successful resistance of the United Provinces to the Spanish
power, the firm establishment of Henry the Fourth on the
throne of France, and the death of Philip the Second, had
secured the State and the Church against all danger from
abroad, an obstinate struggle, destined to last during several
generations, instantly began at home.
It was in the Parliament of 1601 that the opposition which
had, during forty years, been silently gathering and husbanding
strength, fought its first great battle and won its first victory.
The ground was well chosen. The English sovereigns had
always been entrusted with the supreme direction of commer-
cial police. It was their undoubted prerogative to regulate
coin, weights, and measures, and to appoint fairs, markets, and
ports. The line which bounded their authority over trade had,
as usual, been but loosely drawn. They therefore, as usual,
encroached on the province which rightfully belonged to the
legislature. The encroachment was as usual, patiently borne,
till it became serious. But at length the Queen took upon
herself to grant patents of monopoly by scores. There was
scarcely a family in the realm which did not feel itself aggrieved
by the oppression and extortion which this abuse naturally
caused. Iron, oil, vinegar, coal, saltpetre, lead, starch, yarn,
skins, leather, glass, could be bought only at exorbitant prices.
The House of Commons met in an angry and determined
mood. It was in vain that a courtly minority blamed the
Speaker for suffering the acts of the Queen's Highness to be
called in question. The language of the discontented party
was high and menacing, and was echoed by the voice of the
whole nation. The coach of the chief minister of the crown
was surrounded by an indignant populace, who cursed the
monopolies, and exclaimed that the prerogative should not be
suffered to touch the old liberties of England. There seemed
for a moment to be some danger that the long and glorious
withstanding all these blemishes, Queen Elizabeth stands upon record as a
wise and politic princess, for delivering her kingdom from the difficulties
in which it was involved at her accession, for preserving the Protestant
reformation against the potent attempts of the Pope, the Emperor, and
King of Spain abroad, and the Queen of Scots and her Popish subjects at
home. , . . She was the glory of the age in which she lived, and will be
the admiration of posterity. " — History of the Puritans, Part I. Chap. viii.
48 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
reign of Elizabeth would have a shameful and disastrous end.
She, however, with admirable judgment and temper, declined
the contest, put herself at the head of the relorming party,
redressed the grievance, thanked the Commons, in touching
and dignified language, for their tender care of the general
weal, brought back to herself the hearts of the people, and left
to her successors a memorable example of the way in which it
behoves a ruler to deal with public movements which he has
not the means of resisting.
In the year 1603 the great Queen died. That year is, on
many accounts, one of the most important epochs in our history.
It was then that both Scotland and Ireland became parts of
the same empire with England. Both Scotland and Ireland,
indeed, had been subjugated by the Plantagenets ; but neither
country had been patient under the yoke. Scotland had, with
heroic energy, vindicated her independence, had, from the
time of Robert Bruce, been a separate kingdom, and was now
joined to the southern part of the island in a manner which
rather gratified than wounded her national pride. Ireland
had never, since the days of Henry the Second, been able to
expel the foreign invaders; but she had struggled against
them long and fiercely. During the fourteenth and fifteenth
centuries the English power in that island was constantly
declining, and, in the days of Henry the Seventh, had sunk to
the lowest point. The Irish dominions of that prince consisted
only of the counties of Dublin and Louth, of some parts of
Meath and Kildare, and of a few seaports scattered along the
coast. A large portion even of Leinster was not yet divided
into counties. Munster, Ulster, and Connaught were ruled by
petty sovereigns, partly Celts, and partly degenerate Normans,
who had forgotten their origin and had adopted the Celtic
language and manners. But, during the sixteenth century,
the English power had made great progress. The half savage
chieftains who reigned beyond the pale had yielded one after
another to the lieutenants of the Tudors. At length, a few
weeks before the death of Elizabeth, the conquest, which had
been begun more than four hundred years before by Strongbow,
was completed by Mountjoy. Scarcely had James the First
mounted the English throne when the last O'Donnell and
O'Neill who have held the rank of independent princes kissed
his hand at Whitehall. Thenceforward his writs ran and his
judges held assizes in every part of Ireland ; and the English
law superseded the customs which had prevailed among the
aboriginal tribes.
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 49
In extent Scotland and Ireland were nearly equal to each
other, and were together nearly equal to England, but were
much less thickly peopled than England, and were very far
behind England in wealth and civilisation. Scotland had
been kept back by the sterility of her soil ; and, in the midst
of light, the thick darkness of the middle ages still rested on
Ireland.
The population of Scotland, with the exception of the
Celtic tribes which were thinly scattered over the Hebrides
and over the mountainous parts of the northern shires, was of
the same blood with the population of England, and spoke a
tongue which did not differ from the purest Enghsh more than
the dialects of Somersetshire and Lancashire differed from
each other. In Ireland, on the contrary, the population, with
the exception of the small English colony near the coast, was
Celtic, and still kept the Celtic speech and manners.
In natural courage and intelligence both the nations which
now became connected with England ranked high. In perse-
verance, in selfcommand, in forethought, in all the virtues
which conduce to success in life, the Scots have never been
surpassed. The Irish, on the other hand, were distinguished
by qualities which tend to make men interesting rather than
prosperous. They were an ardent and impetuous race, easily
moved to tears or to laughter, to fury or to love. Alone
among the nations of northern Europe they had the suscepti-
bility, the vivacity, the natural turn for acting and rhetoric,
which are indigenous on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea.
In mental cultivation Scotland had an indisputable superiority.
Though that kingdom was then the poorest in Christendom,
it already vied in every branch of learning with the most
favoured countries. Scotsmen, whose dwellings and whose
food were as wretched as those of the Icelanders of our time,
wrote Latin verse with more than the delicacy of Vida, and
made discoveries in science which would have added to the
renown of Galileo. Ireland could boast of no Buchanan or
Napier. The genius, with which her aboriginal inhabitants
were largely endowed, showed itself as yet only in ballads
which, wild and rugged as they were, seemed to the judging
eye of Spenser to contain a portion of the pure gold of
poetry.
Scotland, in becoming part of the British monarchy, pre-
served all her dignity. Having, during many generations,
courageously withstood the English arms, she was now joined
to her stronger neighbour on the most honourable terms. She
§0 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
gave a King instead of receiving one. She retained her own
constitution and laws. Her tribunals and parliaments
remained entirely independent of the tribunals and parliaments
which sate at Westminster. The administration of Scotland
was in Scottish hands ; for no Englishman had any motive to
emigrate northward, and to contend with the shrewdest and
most pertinacious of all races for what was to be scraped
together in the poorest of all treasuries. Meanwhile Scottish
adventurers poured southward, and obtained in all the walks
of life a prosperity which excited much envy, but which was
in general only the just reward of prudence and industry.
Nevertheless Scotland by no means escaped the fate ordained
for every country which is connected, but not incorporated,
with another country of greater resources. Though in name
an independent kingdom, she was, during more than a
century, really treated, in many respects, as a subject
province.
Ireland was undisguisedly governed as a dependency won
by the sword. Her rude national institutions had perished.
The English colonists submitted to the dictation of the mother
country, without whose support they could not exist, and
indemnified themselves by trampling on the people among
whom they had settled. The parliaments which met at
Dublin could pass no law which had not previously been
approved by the English Privy Council. The authority of the
English legislature extended over Ireland. The executive
administration was intrusted to men taken either from
England or from the English pale, and, in either case,
regarded as foreigners, and even as enemies, by the Celtic
population.
But the circumstance which, more than any other, has
made Ireland to differ from Scotland remains to be noticed.
Scotland was Protestant. In no part of Europe had the
movement of the popular mind against the Roman Catholic
Church been so rapid and violent. The reformers had
vanquished, deposed, and imprisoned their idolatrous sove-
reign. They would not endure even such a compromise as
had been effected in England. They had established the
Calvinistic doctrine, discipline, and worship ; and they made
little distinction between Popery and Prelacy, between the
Mass and the Book of Common Prayer. Unfortunately for
Scotland, the prince whom she sent to govern a fairer inherit-
ance had been so much annoyed by the pertinacity with
which her theologians had asserted against him the privileges
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION ^ I
of the synod and the pulpit that he hated the ecclesiastical
polity to which she was fondly attached as much as it was in
his effeminate nature to hate anything, and had no sooner
mounted the English throne than he began to show an
intolerant zeal for the government and ritual of the English
Church.
The Irish were the only people of northern Europe who
had remained true to the old religion. This is to be partly
ascribed to the circumstance that they were some centuries
behind their neighbours in knowledge. But other causes had
cooperated. The Reformation had been a national as well
as a moral revolt. It had been, not only an insurrection of
the laity against the clergy, but also an insurrection of all
the branches of the great German race against an alien
domination. It is a most significant circumstance that no
large society of which the tongue is not Teutonic has ever
turned Protestant, and that, wherever a language derived from
that of ancient Rome is spoken, the religion of modern Rome
to this day prevails. The patriotism of the Irish had taken
a peculiar direction. The object of their animosity was not
Rome, but England; and they had especial reason to abhor
those English sovereigns who had been the chiefs of the great
schism, Henry the Eighth and Elizabeth. During the vain
struggle which two generations of Milesian princes maintained
against the Tudors, religious enthusiasm and national en-
thusiasm became inseparably blended in the minds of the
vanquished race. The new feud of Protestant and Papist
inflamed the old feud of Saxon and Celt. The English
conquerors, meanwhile, neglected all legitimate means of
conversion. No care was taken to provide the vanquished
nation with instructors capable of making themselves under-
stood. No translation of the Bible was put forth in the
Erse language. The government contented itself with
setting up a vast hierarchy of Protestant archbishops, bishops,
and rectors, who did nothing, and who, for doing nothing,
were paid out of the spoils of a Church loved and revered
by the great body of the people.
There was much in the state both of Scotland and of
Ireland which might well excite the painful apprehensions of
a farsighted statesman. As yet, however, there was the
appearance of tranquillity. For the first time all the British
isles were peaceably united under one sceptre.
It should seem that the weight of England among European
nations ought, from this epoch, to have greatly increased.
^2 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
The territory which her new King governed was, in extent,
nearly double that which Elizabeth had inherited. His
empire was also the most complete within itself and the most
secure from attack that was to be found in the world. The
Plantagenets and Tudors had been repeatedly under the
necessity of defending themselves against Scotland while they
were engaged in continental war. The long conflict in
Ireland had been a severe and perpetual drain on their
resources. Yet even under such disadvantages those
sovereigns had been highly considered throughout Christen-
dom. It might, therefore, not unreasonably be expected that
England, Scotland and Ireland combined would form a state
second to none that then existed.
All such expectations were strangely disappointed. On the
day of the accession of James the First our country descended
from the rank which she had hitherto held, and began to be
regarded as a power hardly of the second order. During
many years the great British monarchy, under four successive
princes of the House of Stuart, was scarcely a more important
member of the European system than the little kingdom of
Scotland had previously been. This, however, is little to be
regretted. Of James the First, as of John, it may be said
that, if his administration had been able and splendid, it
would probably have been fatal to our country, and that we
owe more to his weakness and meanness than to the wisdom
and courage of much better sovereigns. He came to the
throne at a critical moment. The time was fast approaching
when either the King must become absolute, or the Parliament
must control the whole executive administration. Had James
been, like Henry the Fourth, like Maurice of Nassau, or like
Gustavus Adolphus, a valiant, active, and politic ruler, had
he put himself at the head of the Protestants of Europe, had
he gained great victories over Tilly and Spinola, had he
adorned Westminster with the spoils of Bavarian monasteries
and Flemish cathedrals, had he hung Austrian and Castilian
banners in St. Paul's, and had he found himself, after great
achievements, at the head of fifty thousand troops, brave,
well disciplined, and devotedly attached to his person, the
English Parliament would soon have been nothing more than
a name. Happily he was not a man to play such a part. He
began his administration by putting an end to the war which
had raged during many years betw^een England and Spain ;
and from that time he shunned hostilities with a caution
which was proof against the insults of his neighbours and
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 53
the clamours of his subjects. Not till the last year of his life
could the influence of his son, his favourite, his Parliament
and his people combined, induce him to strike one feeble
blow in defence of his family and of his religion. It was well
for those whom he governed, that he in this matter disregarded
their wishes. The effect of his pacific policy was that, in his
time, no regular troops were needed, and that, while France,
Spain, Italy, Belgium, and Germany swarmed with mercenary
soldiers, the defence of our island was still confided to the
militia.
As the King had no standing army, and did not even
attempt to form one, it would have been wise in him to avoid
any conflict with his people. But such was his indiscretion
that, while he altogether neglected the means which alone
could make him really absolute, he constantly put forward, in
the most offensive form, claims of which none of his prede-
cessors had ever dreamed. It was at this time that those
strange theories which Filmer afterwards formed into a system,
and which became the badge of the most violent class of
Tories and high churchmen, first emerged into notice. It
was gravely maintained that the Supreme Being regarded
hereditary monarchy, as opposed to other forms of government,
with peculiar favour ; that the rule of succession in order of
primogeniture was a divine institution, anterior to the Christian,
and even to the Mosaic dispensation ; that no human power,
not even that of the whole legislature, no length of adverse
possession, though it extended to ten centuries, could deprive
the legitimate prince of his rights ; that his authority was
necessarily always despotic ; that the laws by which, in
England and in other countries, the prerogative was Hmited
were to be regarded merely as concessions which the sovereign
had freely made and might at his pleasure resume ; and that
any treaty into which a king might enter with his people was
merely a declaration of his present intentions, and not a
contract of which the performance could be demanded. It
is evident that this theory, though intended to strengthen the
foundations of government, altogether unsettles them. Did
the divine and immutable law of primogeniture admit females,
or exclude them ? On either supposition half the sovereigns
of Europe must be usurpers, reigning in defiance of the
commands of heaven, and liable to be dispossessed by the
rightful heirs. These absurd doctrines received no counten-
ance from the Old Testament ; for in the Old Testament we
read that the chosen people were blamed and punished for
54 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
desiring a king, and that they were afterwards commanded to
withdraw their allegiance from him. Their whole history, far
from favouring the notion that primogeniture is of divine
institution, would rather seem to indicate that younger brothers
are under the especial protection of heaven. Isaac was not
the eldest son of Abraham, nor Jacob of Isaac, nor Judah of
Jacob, nor David of Jesse, nor Solomon of David. Indeed
the order of seniority among children is seldom strictly
regarded in countries where polygamy is practised. Nor did
the system of Filmer receive any countenance from those
passages of the New Testament which describe government
as an ordinance of God : for the government under which the
writers of the New Testament lived was not a hereditary
monarchy. The Roman Emperors were republican magistrates,
named by the Senate. None of them pretended to rule by
right of birth ; and, in fact, both Tiberius, to whom Christ
commanded that tribute should be given, and Nero, whom
Paul directed the Romans to obey, were, according to the
patriarchal theory of government, usurpers. In the middle
ages the doctrine of indefeasible hereditary right would have
been regarded as heretical . for it was altogether incompatible
with the high pretensions of the Church of Rome. It was
a doctrine unknown to the founders of the Church of England.
The Homily on Wilful Rebellion had strongly, and indeed too
strongly, inculcated submission to constituted authority, but
had made no distinction between hereditary and elective
monarchies, or between monarchies and republics. Indeed
most of the predecessors of James would, from personal
motives, have regarded the patriarchal theory of government
with aversion. William Rufus, Henry the First, Stephen,
John, Henry the Fourth, Henry the Fifth, Henry the Sixth,
Richard the Third, and Henry the Seventh, had all reigned in
defiance of the strict rule of descent. A grave doubt hung
over the legitimacy both of Mary and of Elizabeth. It was
impossible that both Catharine of Aragon and Anne Boleyn
could have been lawfully married to Henry the Eighth; and
the highest authority in the realm had pronounced that neither
was so. The Tudors, far from considering the law of succes-
sion as a divine and unchangeable institution, were constantly
tampering with it. Henry the Eighth obtained an act of
parliament, giving him power to leave the crown by will, and
actually made a vidll to the prejudice of the royal family of
Scotland. Edward the Sixth, unauthorised by parliament,
assumed a similar power, with the full approbation of the
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 55
most eminent Reformers, Elizabeth, conscious that ner own
title was open to grave objection, and unwilling to admit even
a reversionary right in her rival and enemy the Queen of Scots,
induced the Parliament, to pass a law, enacting that whoever
should deny the competency of the reigning sovereign, with
the assent of the Estates of the realm, to alter the succession,
should suffer death as a traitor. But the situation of James
was widely different from that of Elizabeth. Far inferior to
her in abilities and in popularity, regarded by the English as
an alien, and excluded from the throne by the testament of
Henry the Eighth, the King of Scots was yet the undoubted
heir of William the Conqueror and of Egbert. He had,
therefore, an obvious interest in inculcating the superstitious
notion that birth confers rights anterior to law, and unalterable
by law. It was a notion, moreover, well suited to his intellect
and temper. It soon found many advocates among those who
aspired to his favour, and made rapid progress among the
clergy of the Established Church.
Thus, at the very moment at which a republican spirit began
to manifest itself strongly in the Parliament and in the country,
the claims of the monarch took a monstrous form which would
have disgusted the proudest and most arbitrary of those who
had preceded him on the throne.
James was always boasting of his skill in what he called
kingcraft ; and yet it is hardly possible even to imagine a
course more directly opposed to all the rules of kingcraft than
that which he followed. The policy of wise rulers has always
been to disguise strong acts under popular forms. It was thus
that Augustus and Napoleon established absolute monarchies,
while the public regarded them merely as eminent citizens
invested with temporary magistracies. The policy of James
was the direct reverse of theirs. He enraged and alarmed his
Parliament by constantly telling them that they held their
privileges merely during his pleasure, and that they had no
more business to inquire what he might lawfully do than what
the Deity might lawfully do. Yet he quailed before them,
abandoned minister after minister to their vengeance, and
suffered them to tease him into acts directly opposed to his
strongest inclinations. Thus the indignation excited by his
claims and the scorn excited by his concessions went on
growing together. By his fondness for worthless minions, and
by the sanction which he gave to their tyranny and rapacity,
he kept discontent constantly alive. His cowardice, his
childishness, his pedantry, his ungainly person and manners,
C34
^6 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
his provincial accent made him an object of derision. Even
in his virtues and accomplishments there was something
eminently unkingly. Throughout the whole course of his
reign, all the venerable associations by which the throne had
long been fenced were gradually losing their strength. During
two hundred years all the sovereigns who had ruled England,
with the single exception of the unfortunate Henry the Sixth,
had been strongminded, highspirited, courageous, and of
princely bearing. Almost all had possessed abilities above
the ordinary level. It was no light thing that, on the very
eve of the decisive struggle between our Kings and their
Parliaments, royalty should be exhibited to the world stammer-
ing, slobbering, shedding unmanly tears, trembling at a drawn
sword, and talking in the style alternately of a buffoon and of
a pedagogue.
In the meantime the religious dissensions, by which, from
the days of Edward the Sixth, the Protestant body had been
distracted, had become more formidable than ever. The
interval which had separated the first generation of Puritans
from Cranmer and Jewel was small indeed when compared
with the interval which separated the third generation of
Puritans from Laud and Hammond. While the recollection
of Mary's cruelties was still fresh, while the power of the
Catholic party still inspired apprehension, while Spain still
retained ascendency and aspired to universal dominion, all the
reformed sects knew that they had a strong common interest
and a deadly common enemy. The animosity which they
felt towards each other was languid when compared with the
animosity which they all felt towards Rome. Conformists and
Nonconformists had heartily joined in enacting penal laws of
extreme severity against the Papists. But when more than
half a century of undisturbed possession had given confidence
to the Established Church, when nine tenths of the nation
had become heartily Protestant, when England was at peace
with all the world, when there was no danger that Popery
would be forced by foreign arms on the nation, when the last
confessors who had stood before Bonner had passed away, a
change took place in the feeling of the Anglican clergy. Their
hostility to the Roman Catholic doctrine and discipline was con-
siderably mitigated. Their dislike of the Puritans, on the other
hand, increased daily. The controversies which had from the
beginning divided the Protestant party took such a form as
made reconciliation hopeless ; and new controversies of still
greater importance were added to the old subjects of dispute.
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 57
The founders of the Anglican Church had retained episcopacy
as an ancient, a decent, and a convenient ecclesiastical polity,
but had not declared that form of church government to be of
divine institution. We have already seen how low an estimate
Cranmer had formed of the ofifice of a Bishop. In the reign
of Elizabeth, Jewel, Cooper, Whitgift, and other eminent
doctors defended prelacy as innocent, as useful, as what the
state might lawfully establish, as what, when established by the
state, was entitled to the respect of every citizen. But they
never denied that a Christian community without a Bishop
might be a pure Church. On the contrary, they regarded the
Protestants of the Continent as of the same household of faith
with themselves. Englishmen in England were indeed bound
to acknowledge the authority of the Bishop, as they were bound
to acknowledge the authority of the Sheriff and of the Coroner:
but the obligation was purely local. An English churchman,
nay even an English prelate, if he went to Holland, conformed
without scruple to the established religion of Holland. Abroad
the ambassadors of Elizabeth and James went in state to the
very worship which Elizabeth and James persecuted at home,
and carefully abstained from decorating their private chapels
after the Anglican fashion, lest scandal should be given to
weaker brethren. In the year 1603, the Convocation of the
province of Canterbury solemnly recognised the Church of
Scotland, a Church in which episcopal control and episcopal
ordination were then unknown, as a branch of the Holy
Catholic Church of Christ.* It was even held that Presby-
terian ministers were entitled to place and voice in oecumenical
councils. When the States General of the United Provinces
convoked at Dort a synod of doctors not episcopally ordained,
an Enghsh Bishop and an English Dean, commissioned by the
head of the English Church, sate with those doctors, preached
to them, and voted with them on the gravest questions of
theology.! Nay, many English benefices were held by divines
who had been admitted to the ministry in the Calvinistic form
used on the Continent ; nor was reordination by a Bishop
in such cases then thought necessary, or even lawful.
But a new race of divines was already rising in the Church
* Canon 55. of 1603.
t Joseph Hall, then dean of Worcester, and afterwards bishop of
Norwich, was one of the commissioners. In his life of himself, he says :
" My unworthiness was named for one of the assistants of that honourable,
grave, and reverend meeting," To high churchmen this humility will seem
not a little out of place.
^"8 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
of England. In their view the episcopal office was essential
to the welfare of a Christian society and to the efficacy of the
most solemn ordinances of religion. To that office belonged
certain high and sacred privileges, which no human power
could give or take away. A church might as well be without
the doctrine of the Trinity, or the doctrine of the Incarnation,
as without the apostolical orders ; and the Church of Rome,
which, in the midst of all her corruptions, had retained the
apostolical orders, was nearer to primitive purity than those
reformed societies which had rashly set up, in opposition to
the divine model, a system invented by men.
In the days of Edward the Sixth and of Elizabeth, the
defenders of the Anglican ritual had generally contented them-
selves with saying that it might be used without sin, and that,
therefore, none but a perverse and undutiful subject would
refuse to use it when enjoined to do so by the magistrate.
Now, however, that rising party which claimed for the polity
of the Church a celestial origin began to ascribe to her services
a new dignity and importance. It was hinted that, if the
established worship had any fault, that fault was extreme
simplicity, and that the Reformers had, in the heat of their
quarrel with Rome, abolished many ancient ceremonies which
might with advantage have been retained. Days and places
were again held in mysterious veneration. Some practices
which had long been disused, and which were commonly
regarded as superstitious mummeries, were revived. Paintings
and carvings, which had escaped the fury of the first generation
of Protestants, became the objects of a respect such as to many
seemed idolatrous.
No part of the system of the old Church had been more
detested by the reformers than the honour paid to celibacy.
They held that the doctrine of Rome on this subject had been
prophetically condemned by the Apostle Paul, as a doctrine of
devils ; and they dwelt much on the crimes and scandals
which seemed to prove the justice of this awful denunciation.
Luther had evinced his own opinion in the clearest manner, by
espousing a nun. Some of the most illustrious bishops and
priests who had died by fire during the reign of Mary had left
wives and children. Now, however, it began to be rumoured
that the old monastic spirit had reappeared in the Church of
England ; that there was in high quarters a prejudice against
married priests ; that even laymen, who called themselves
Protestants, had made resolutions of celibacy which almost
amounted to vows ; nay, that a minister of the established
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 59
religion had set up a nunnery, in which the psalms were
chaunted at midnight, by a company of virgins dedicated to
God.*
Nor was this all. A class of questions as to which the
founders of the Anglican Church and the first generation of
Puritans had differed little or not at all began to furnish matter
for fierce disputes. The controversies which had divided the
Protestant body in its infancy had related almost exclusively
to church government and to ceremonies. There had been
no serious quarrel between the contending parties on points of
metaphysical theology. The doctrines held by the chiefs of
the hierarchy touching original sin, faith, grace, predestination,
and election, were those which are popularly called Calvin istic.
Towards the close of Elizabeth's reign her favourite prelate,
Archbishop Whitgift, drew up, in concert with the Bishop of
London and other theologians, the celebrated instrument
known by the name of the Lambeth Articles. In that instru-
ment the most startling of the Calvinistic doctrines are
affirmed with a distinctness which would shock many who, in
our age, are reputed Calvinists. One clergyman, who took the
opposite side, and spoke harshly of Calvin, was arraigned for
his presumption by the University of Cambridge, and escaped
punishment only by expressing his firm belief in the tenets of
reprobation and final perseverance, and his sorrow for the
offence which he had given to pious men by reflecting on the
great French reformer. The school of divinity of which
Hooker was the chief occupies a middle place between the
school of Cranmer and the school of Laud ; and Hooker has,
in modern times, been claimed by the Arminians as an ally.
Yet Hooker pronounced Calvin to have been a man superior
in wisdom to any other divine that France had produced, a
man to whom thousands were indebted for the knowledge of
divine truth, but who was himself indebted to God alone.
When the Arminian controversy arose in Holland, the English
government and the English Church lent strong support to
the Calvinistic party ; nor is the English name altogether free
from the stain which has been left on that party by the
imprisonment of Grotius and the judicial murder of Barneveldt.
But, even before the meeting of the Dutch synod, that part
of the Anglican clergy which was peculiarly hostile to the
Calvinistic church government and to the Calvinistic worship
* Peckard's Life of Ferrar. The Arminian Nunnery, or a Brief De-
scription of the late erected monastical Place called the Arminian Nunnery,
at Little Gidding in Huntingdonshire, 1641.
6o HISTORY OF ENGLAND
had begun to regard with dislike the Calvinistic metaphysics ;
and this feeUng was very naturally strengthened by the gross
injustice, insolence, and cruelty of the party which was
prevalent at Dort. The Arminian doctrine, a doctrine less
austerely logical than that of the early reformers, but more
agreeable to the popular notions of the divine justice and
benevolence, spread fast and wide. The infection soon
reached the court. Opinions which, at the time of the
accession of James, no clergyman could have avowed without
imminent risk of being stripped of his gown were now the best
title to preferment. A divine of that age, who was asked by a
simple country gentleman what the Arminians held, answered,
with as much truth as wit, that they held all the best bishoprics
and deaneries in England.
While a section of the Anglican clergy quitted, in one
direction, the position which they had originally occupied, a
section of the Puritan body departed, in a direction diametri-
cally opposite, from the principles and practices of their
fathers. The persecution which the separatists had undergone
had been severe enough to irritate, but not severe enough to
destroy. They had not been tamed into submission, but
baited into savageness and stubbornness. After the fashion of
oppressed sects, they mistook their own vindictive feelmgs for
emotions of piety, encouraged in themselves by reading and
meditation a disposition to brood over their wrongs, and, when
they had worked themselves up into hating their enemies,
imagined that they were only hating the enemies of heaven.
In the New Testament there was Httle indeed which, even
when perverted by the most disingenuous exposition, could
seem to countenance the indulgence of malevolent passions.
But the Old Testament contained the history of a race selected
by God to be witnesses of his unity and ministers of his
vengeance, and specially commanded by him to do many
things which, if done without his special command, would
have been atrocious crimes. In such a history it was not
difficult for fierce and gloomy spirits to find much that might
be distorted to suit their wishes. The extreme Puritans
therefore began to feel for the Old Testament a preference,
which, perhaps, they did not distinctly avow even to them-
selves ; but which showed itself in all their sentiments and
habits. They paid to the Hebrew language a respect which
they refused to that tongue in which the discourses of Jesus
and the epistles of Paul have come down to us. They
baptized their children by the names, not of Christian saints,
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 6 1
but of Hebrew patriarchs and warriors. In defiance of the
express and reiterated declarations of Luther and Calvin, they
turned the weekly festival by which the Church had, from the
primitive times, commemorated the resurrection of her Lord,
into a Jewish Sabbath. They sought for prmciples of juris-
prudence m the Mosaic law, and for precedents to guide their
ordinary conduct in the books of Judges and Kings. Their
thoughts and discourse ran much on acts which were assuredly
not recorded as examples for our imitation. The prophet
who hewed in pieces a captive king, the rebel general who
gave the blood of a queen to the dogs, the matron who, in
defiance of plighted faith, and of the laws of eastern hospitality,
drove the nail into the brain of the fugitive ally who had just
fed at her board, and who was sleeping under the shadow of
her tent, were proposed as models to Christians suffering
under the tyranny of princes and prelates. Morals and
manners were subjected to a code resembling that of the
synagogue, when the synagogue was in its worst state. The
dress, the deportment, the language, the studies, the amuse-
ments of the rigid sect were regulated on principles resembling
those of the Pharisees who, proud of their washed hands and
broad phylacteries, taunted the Redeemer as a sabbathbreaker
and a winebibber. It was a sin to hang garlands on a
Maypole, to drink a friend's health, to fly a hawk, to hunt a
stag, to play at chess, to wear lovelocks, to put starch into a
ruff, to touch the virginals, to read the Fairy Queen. Rules
such as these, rules which would have appeared insupportable
to the free and joyous spirit of Luther, and contemptible to the
serene and philosophical intellect of Zwingle, threw over all
life a more than monastic gloom The learning and eloquence
by which the great reformers had been eminently distinguished,
and to which they had been, in no small measure, indebted
for their success, were regarded by the new school of Pro-
testants with suspicion, if not with aversion. Some precisians
had scruples about teaching the Latin grammar because the
names of Mars, Bacchus, and Apollo occurred in it. The fine
arts were all but proscribed. The solemn peal of the organ
was superstitious. The light music of Ben Jonson's masques
was dissolute. Half the fine paintings in England were
idolatrous, and the other half indecent. The extreme Puritan
was at once known from other men by his gait, his garb, his
lank hair, the sour solemnity of his face, the upturned white of
his eyes, the nasal twang with which he spoke, and, above all,
by his peculiar dialect. He employed, on every occasion,
62 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
the imagery and style of Scripture. Hebraisms violently
introduced into the English language, and metaphors borrowed
from the boldest lyric poetry of a remote age and country, and
applied to the common concerns of English life, were the
most striking peculiarities of this cant, which moved, not
without cause, the derision both of prelatists and libertines.
Thus the political and religious schism which had originated
in the sixteenth century was, during the first quarter of the
seventeenth century, constantly widening. Theories tending
to Turkish despotism were in fashion at Whitehall, Theories
tending to republicanism were in favour with a large portion
of the House of Commons. The violent Prelatists who were,
to a man, zealous for prerogative, and the violent Puritans
who were, to a man, zealous for the privileges of Parliament,
regarded each other with animosity more intense than that
which, in the preceding generation, had existed between
Catholics and Protestants.
While the minds of men were in this state, the country,
after a peace of many years, at length engaged in a war which
required strenuous exertions. This war hastened the approach
of the great constitutional crisis. It was necessary that the
King should have a large military force. He could not have
such a force without money. He could not legally raise
money without the consent of Parliament. It followed, there-
fore, that he must either administer the government in
conformity with the sense of the House of Commons, or must
venture on such a violation of the fundamental laws of the
land as had been unknown during several centuries. The
Plantagenets and the Tudors had, it is true, occasionally
supplied a deficiency in their revenue by a benevolence or a
forced loan : but these expedients were always of a temporary
nature. To meet the regular charge of a long war by regular
taxation, imposed without the consent of the Estates of the
realm, was a course which Henry the Eighth himself would
not have dared to take. It seemed, therefore, that the decisive
hour was approaching, and that the English Parliament would
soon either share the fate of the senates of the Continent, or
obtain supreme ascendency in the state.
Just at this conjuncture James died. Charles the First
succeeded to the throne. He had received from nature a far
better understanding, a far stronger will, and a far keener and
firmer temper than his father's. He had inherited his father's
political theories, and was much more disposed than his father
to carry them into practice. He was, like his father, a zealous
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 63
episcopalian. He was, moreover, what his father had never
been, a zealous Arminian, and, though no Papist, liked a
Papist much better than a Puritan. It would be unjust to
deny that Charles had some of the qualities of a good, and
even of a great prince. He wrote and spoke, not, like his
father, with the exactness of a professor, but after the fashion
of intelligent and well educated gentlemen. His taste in
literature and art was excellent, his manner dignified though
not gracious, his domestic life without blemish. Faithlessness
was the chief cause of his disasters, and is the chief stain on
his memory. He was, in truth, impelled by an incurable
propensity to dark and crooked ways. It may seem strange
that his conscience, which, on occasions of little moment, was
sufficiently sensitive, should never have reproached him with
this great vice. But there is reason to believe that he was
perfidious, not only from constitution and from habit, but also
on principle. He seems to have learned from the theologians
whom he most esteemed that between him and his subjects
there could be nothing of the nature of mutual contract ; that
he could not, even if he would, divest himself of his despotic
authority ; and that, in every promise which he made, there
was an implied reservation that such promise might be broken
in case of necessity, and that of the necessity he was the sole
judge.
And now began that hazardous game on which were staked
the destinies of the English people. It was played on the side
of the House of Commons with keenness, but with admirable
dexterity, coolness, and perseverance. Great statesmen who
looked far behind them and far before them were at the head
of that assembly. They were resolved to place the King in
such a situation that he must either conduct the administration
in conformity with the wishes of his Parliament, or make
outrageous attacks on the most sacred principles of the con-
stitution. They accordingly doled out supplies to him very
sparingly. He found that he must govern either in harmony
with the House of Commons, or in defiance of all law. His
choice was soon made. He dissolved his first Parliament,
and levied taxes by his own authority. He convoked a second
Parliament, and found it more intractable than the first. He
again resorted to the expedient of dissolution, raised fresh
taxes without any show of legal right, and threw the chiefs of
the opposition into prison. At the same time a new grievance,
which the peculiar feelings and habits of the English nation
made insupportably painful, and which seemed to all discerning
*C34
64 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
men to be of fearful augury, excited general discontent and
alarm. Companies of soldiers were billeted on the people ;
and martial law was, in some places, substituted for the ancient
jurisprudence of the realm.
The King called a third Parliament, and soon perceived
that the opposition was stronger and fiercer than ever. He
now determined on a change of tactics. Instead of opposing
an inflexible resistance to the demands of the Commons, he,
after much altercation and many evasions, agreed to a com-
promise which, if he had faithfully adhered to it, would have
averted a long series of calamities. The Parliament granted
an ample supply. The King ratified, in the most solemn
manner, that celebrated law, which is known by the name of
the Petition of Right, and which is the second Great Charter
of the liberties of England. By ratifying that law he bound
himself never again to raise money without the consent of the
Houses, never again to imprison any person, except in due
course of law, and never again to subject his people to the
jurisdiction of courts martial.
The day on which the royal sanction was, after many delays,
solemnly given to this great act, was a day of joy and hope.
The Commons, who crowded the bar of the House of Lords,
broke forth into loud acclamations as soon as the clerk had
pronounced the ancient form of words by which our princes
have, during many ages, signified their assent to the wishes of
the Estates of the realm. Those acclamations were reechoed
by the voice of the capital and of the nation ; but within three
weeks it became manifest that Charles had no intention of
observing the compact into which he had entered. The supply
given by the representatives of the nation was collected. The
promise by which that supply had been obtained was broken.
A violent contest followed. The Parliament was dissolved
with every mark of royal displeasure. Some of the most
distinguished members were imprisoned ; and one of them,
Sir John Eliot, after years of suffering, died in confinement.
Charles, however, could not venture to raise, by his own
authority, taxes sufificient for carrying on war. He accordingly
hastened to make peace with his neighbours, and thenceforth
gave his whole mind to British politics.
Now commenced a new era. Many English Kings had
occasionally committed unconstitutional acts : but none had
ever systematically attempted to make himself a despot, and to
reduce the Parliament to a nullity. Such was the end which
Charles distinctly proposed to himself. From March 1629 to
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 6^
April 1640, the Houses were not convoked. Never in our
history had there been an interval of eleven years between
Parliament and Parliament. Only once had there been an
interval of even half that length. This fact alone is sufficient
to refute those who represent Charles as having merely trodden
in the footsteps of the Plantagenets and Tudors.
It is proved, by the testimony of the King's most strenuous
supporters, that, during this part of his reign, the provisions of
the Petition of Right were violated by him, not occasionally,
but constantly, and on system ; that a large part of the revenue
was raised without any legal authority ; and that persons
obnoxious to the government languished for years in prison,
without beng ever called upon to plead before any tribunal.
For these things history must hold the King himself chiefly
responsible. From the time of his third Parliament he was his
own prime minister. Several persons, however, whose temper
and talents were suited to his purposes, were at the head of
different departments of the administration.
Thomas Wentworth, successively created Lord Wentworth
and Earl of Strafford, a man of great abilities, eloquence, and
courage, but of a cruel and imperious nature, was the counsellor
most trusted in political and military affairs. He had been
one of the most distinguished members of the opposition, and
felt towards those whom he had deserted that peculiar mahgnity
which has, in all ages, been characteristic of apostates. He
perfectly understood the feelings, the resources, and the policy
of the party to which he had lately belonged, and had formed
a vast and deeply meditated scheme which very nearly con-
founded even the able tactics of the statesmen by whom the
House of Commons had been directed. To this scheme, in
his confidential correspondence, he gave the expressive name of
Thorough. His object was to do in England all, and more
than all, that Richelieu was doing in France ; to make Charles
a monarch as absolute as any on the Continent ; to put the
estates and the personal liberty of the whole people at the
disposal of the crown ; to deprive the courts of law of all
independent authority, even in ordinary questions of civil right
between man and man ; and to punish with merciless rigour all
who murmured at the acts of the government, or who applied,
even in the most decent and regular manner, to any tribunal
for relief against those acts.*
* The correspondence of Wentworth seems to me fully to bear out what
I have said in the text. To transcribe all the passages which have led me
to the conclusion at which I have arrived, would be impossible ; nor would
66 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
This was his end ; and he distinctly saw in what manner
alone this end could be attained. There was, in truth, about
all his notions a clearness, coherence, and precision which, if
he had not been pursuing an object pernicious to his country
and to his kind, would have justly entitled him to high
admiration. He saw that there was one instrument, and only
one, by which his vast and daring projects could be carried into
execution. That instrument was a standing army. To the
forming of such an army, therefore, he directed all the energy
of his strong mind. In Ireland, where he was viceroy^ he
actually succeeded in establishing a military despotism, not
only over the aboriginal population, but also over the English
colonists, and was able to boast that, in that island, the King
was as absolute as any prince in the whole world could be.*
The ecclesiastical administration was, in the meantime,
principally directed by William Laud, Archbishop of Canter-
bury. Of all the prelates of the Anglican Church, Laud had
departed farthest from the principles of the Reformation, and
had drawn nearest to Rome. His theology was more remote
than even that of the Dutch Arminians from the theology
of the Calvinists. His passion for ceremonies, his rever-
ence for holidays, vigils, and sacred places, his ill-concealed
dislike of the marriage of ecclesiastics, the ardent and not
altogether disinterested zeal with which he asserted the claims
of the clergy to the reverence of the laity, would have made
him an object of aversion to the Puritans, even if he had used
only legal and gentle means for the attainment of his ends.
But his understanding was narrow, and his commerce with the
world had been small. He was by nature rash, irritable, quick
to feel for his own dignity, slow to sympathize with the
sufferings of others, and prone to the error, common in super-
stitious men, of mistaking his own peevish and malignant
moods for emotions of pious zeal. Under his direction every
corner of the realm was subjected to a constant and minute
inspection. Every little congregation of separatists was tracked
out and broken up. Even the devotions of private families
could not escape the vigilance of his spies. Such fear did his
rigour inspire that the deadly hatred of the Church, which
it be easy to make a better selection than has already been made by Mr.
Hallam. I may, however, direct the attention of the reader particularly to
the very able paper which Wentworth drew up respecting the affairs of
the Palatinate. The date is March 31, 1637.
* These are Wentworth's own words. See his letter to Laud, dated
Dec. 16, 1634.
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 67
festered in innumerable bosoms, was generally disguised under
an outward show of conformity. On the very eve of troubles,
fatal to himself and to his order, the Bishops of several exten-
sive dioceses were able to report to him that not a single
dissenter was to be found within their jurisdiction.*
The tribunals afforded no protection to the subject against
the civil and ecclesiastical tyranny of that period. The judges
of the common law, holding their situations during the pleasure
of the King, were scandalously obsequious. Yet, obsequious
as they were, they were less ready and efficient instruments of
arbitrary power than a class of courts, the memory of which is
still, after the lapse of more than two centuries, held in deep
abhorrence by the nation. Foremost among these courts in
power and in infamy were the Star Chamber and the High
Commission, the former a political, the latter a religious
inquisition. Neither was a part of the old constitution of
England. The Star Chamber had been remodelled, and the
High Commission created by the Tudors. The power which
these boards had possessed before the accession of Charles had
been extensive and formidable, but had been small indeed
when compared with that which they now usurped. Guided
chiefly by the violent spirit of the primate, and freed from the
control of Parliament they displayed a rapacity, a violence, a
malignant energy, which had been unknown to any former
age. The government was able, through their instrumentality,
to fine, imprison, pillory, and mutilate without restraint. A
separate council which sate at York, under the presidency of
Wentworth, was armed, in defiance of law, by a pure act of
prerogative, with almost boundless power over the northern
counties. All these tribunals insulted and defied the authority
of Westminster Hall, and daily committed excesses which the
most distinguished Royalists have warmly condemned. We
are informed by Clarendon that there was hardly a man of note
in the realm who had not personal experience of the harshness
and greediness of the Star Chamber, that the High Commis-
sion had so conducted itself that it had scarce a friend left in
the kingdom, and that the tyranny of the Council of York had
made the Great Charter a dead letter north of the Trent.
The government of England was now, in all points but one,
as despotic as that of France. But that one point was all
important. There was still no standing army. There was,
therefore, no security that the whole fabric of tyranny might
* See his report to Charles for the year 1639.
68 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
not be subverted in a single day ; and, if taxes were imposed
by the royal authority for the support of an army, it was
probable that there would be an immediate and irresistible
explosion. This was the difficulty which more than any other
perplexed Wentworth. The Lord Keeper Finch, in concert
with other lawyers who were employed by the government,
recommended an expedient, which was eagerly adopted. The
ancient princes of England, as they called on the inhabitants
of the counties near Scotland to arm and array themselves for
the defence of the border, had sometimes called on the mari-
time counties to furnish ships for the defence of the coast.
In the room of ships money had sometimes been accepted.
This old practice it was now determined, after a long interval,
not only to revive but to extend. Former princes had raised
shipmoney only in time of war ; it was now enacted in a time
of profound peace. Former princes, even in the most perilous
wars, had raised shipmoney only along the coasts ; it was now
exacted from the inland shires. Former princes had raised
shipmoney only for the maritime defence of the country ; it
was now exacted, by the admission of the Royalists them-
selves, with the object, not of maintaining a navy, but of
furnishing the King with supplies which might be increased at
his discretion to any amount, and expended at his discretion
for any purpose.
The whole nation was alarmed and incensed. John Hamp-
den, an opulent and well-born gentleman of Buckinghamshire,
highly considered in his own neighbourhood, but as yet little
known to the kingdom generally, had the courage to step
forward, to confront the whole power of the government, and
take on himself the cost and the risk of disputing the pre-
rogative to which the King laid claim. The case was argued
before the judges in the Exchequer Chamber. So strong
were the arguments against the pretensions of the crown that,
dependent and servile as the judges were, the majority against
Hampden was the smallest possible. Still there was a
majority. The interpreters of the law had pronounced that
one great and productive tax might be imposed by the royal
authority. Wentworth justly observed that it was impossible
to vindicate their judgment except by reasons directly leading
to a conclusion which they had not ventured to draw. If
money might legally be raised without the consent of Parlia-
ment for the support of a fleet, it was not easy to deny that
money might, without consent of Parliament, be legally raised
for the support of an army.
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 69
The decision of the judges increased the irritation of the
people. A century earlier, irritation less serious would have
produced a general rising. But discontent did not now so
readily as in former ages take the form of rebellion. The
nation had been long steadily advancing in wealth and in
civilisation. Since the great northern Earls took up arms
against Elizabeth seventy years had elapsed ; and during those
seventy years there had been no civil war. Never, during the
whole existence of the English nation, had so long a period
passed without intestine hostilities. Men had become accus-
tomed to the pursuits of peaceful industry, and, exasperated as
they were, hesitated long before they drew the sword.
This was the conjuncture at which the liberties of the nation
were in the greatest peril. The opponents of the government
began to despair of the destiny of their country ; and many
looked to the American wilderness as the only asylum in
which they could enjoy civil and spiritual freedom. There a
few resolute Puritans, who, in the cause of their religion, feared
neither the rage of the ocean nor the hardships of uncivilised
life, neither the fangs of savage beasts nor the tomahawks of
more savage men, had built, amidst the primeval forest,
villages which are now great and opulent cities, but which
have, through every change, retained some trace of the char-
acter derived from their founders. The government regarded
these infant colonies with aversion, and attempted violently
to stop the stream of emigration, but could not prevent the
population of New England from being largely recruited by
stout-hearted and Godfearing men from every part of the old
England. And now Wentworth exulted in the near prospect
of Thorough. A few years might probably suffice for the
execution of his great design. If strict economy were
observed, if all collision with foreign powers were carefully
avoided, the debts of the crown would be cleared off : there
would be funds available for the support of a large military
force ; and that force would soon break the refractory spirit of
the nation.
At this crisis an act of insane bigotry suddenly changed the
whole face of public affairs. Had the King been wise, he
would have pursued a cautious and soothing policy towards
Scotland till he was master in the South. For Scotland was
of all his kingdoms that in which there was the greatest risk
that a spark might produce a flame, and that a flame might
become a conflagration. Constitutional opposition, indeed,
such as he had encountered at Westminster, he had not to
70 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
apprehend at Edinburgh. The ParHament of his northern
kingdom was a very different body from that which bore the
same name in England. It was ill constituted ; it was little
considered ; and it had never imposed any serious restraint on
any of his predecessors. The three Estates sate in one house.
The commissioners of the burghs were considered merely as
retainers of the great nobles. No act could be introduced till
it had been approved by the Lords of Articles, a committee
which was really, though not in form, nominated by the
crown. But, though the Scottish Parliament was obsequious,
the Scottish people had always been singularly turbulent and
ungovernable. They had butchered their first James in his
bedchamber : they had repeatedly arrayed themselves in arms
against James the Second : they had slain James the Third on
the field of battle : their disobedience had broken the heart of
James the Fifth : they had deposed and imprisoned Mary :
they had led her son captive ; and their temper was still as
intractable as ever. Their habits were rude and martial. All
along the southern border, and all along the line between the
highlands and the lowlands, raged an incessant predatory war.
In every part of the country men were accustomed to redress
their wrongs by the strong hand. Whatever loyalty the nation
had anciently felt to the Stuarts had cooled during their long
absence. The supreme influence over the public mind was
divided between two classes of malecontents, the lords of the
soil and the preachers ; lords animated by the same spirit
which had often impelled the old Douglasses to withstand the
royal house, and preachers who had inherited the republican
opinions and the unconquerable spirit of Knox. Both the
national and religious feelings of the population had been
wounded. All orders of men complained that their country,
that country which had, with so much glory, defended her
independence against the ablest and bravest Plantagenets,
had, through the instrumentality of her native princes, become
in effect, though not in name, a province of England. In no
part of Europe had the Calvinistic doctrine and discipline
taken so strong a hold on the public mind. The Church of
Rome was regarded by the great body of the people with a
hatred which might justly be called ferocious ] and the
Church of England, which seemed to be every day becoming
more and more like the Church of Rome, was an object of
scarcely less aversion.
The government had long wished to extend the Anglican
system over the whole island, and had already, with this view,
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 7I
made several changes highly distasteful to every Presbyterian.
One innovation, however, the most hazardous of all, because
it was directly cognisable by the senses of the common people,
had not yet been attempted. The public worship of God was
still conducted in the manner acceptable to the nation. Now,
however, Charles and Laud determined to force on the Scots
the English liturgy, or rather a liturgy which, wherever it
differed from that of England, differed, in the judgment of all
rigid Protestants, for the worse.
To this step, taken in the mere wantonness of tyranny, and
in criminal ignorance or more criminal contempt of public
feeling, our country owes her freedom. The first performance
of the foreign ceremonies produced a riot. The riot rapidly
became a revolution. Ambition, patriotism, fanaticism, were
mingled in one headlong torrent. The whole nation was in
arms. The power of England was indeed, as appeared some
years later, sufficient to goerce Scotland : but a large part of
the English people sympathized with the religious feelings of
the insurgents; and many Englishmen who had no scruple
about antiphonies and genuflexions, altars and surplices, saw
with pleasure the progress of a rebellion which seemed likely
to confound the arbitrary projects of the court, and to make
the calling of a Parliament necessary.
For the senseless freak which had produced these effects
Wentworth is not responsible.* It had, in fact, thrown all his
plans into confusion. To counsel submission, however, was
not in his nature. An attempt was made to put down the
insurrection by the sword : but the King's military means and
military talents were unequal to the task. To impose fresh
taxes on England in defiance of law would, at this conjuncture,
have been madness. No resource was left but a Parliament ;
and in the spring of 1640 a Parliament was convoked.
The nation had been put into good humour by the pros-
pect of seeing constitutional government restored, and
grievances redressed. The new House of Commons was
more temperate and more respectful to the throne than any
which had sate since the death of Elizabeth. The moderation
of this assembly has been highly extolled by the most distin-
guished royalists, and seems to have caused no small vexation
and disappointment to the chiefs of the opposition : but it was
the uniform practice of Charles, a practice equally impolitic
and ungenerous, to refuse all compliance with the desires of
* See his letter to the Earl of Northumberland, dated July 30, 1638.
72 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
his people, till those desires were expressed in a menacing
tone. As soon as the Commons showed a disposition to take
into consideration the grievances under which the country had
suffered during eleven years, the King dissolved the Parliament
with every mark of displeasure.
Between the dissolution of this shortlived assembly and the
meeting of that ever memorable body known by the name of
the Long Parliament, intervened a few months, during which
the yoke was pressed down more severely than ever on the
nation, while the spirit of the nation rose up more angrily than
ever against the yoke. Members of the House of Commons
were questioned by the Privy Council touching their parlia-
mentary conduct, and thrown into prison for refusing to reply.
Shipmoney was levied with increased rigour. The Lord
Mayor and the Sheriffs of London were threatened with
imprisonment for remissness in collecting the payments.
Soldiers were enlisted by force. Money for their support was
exacted from their counties. Torture, which had always been
illegal, and which had recently been declared illegal even by
the servile judges of that age, was inflicted for the last time in
England in the month of May, 1640.
Everything now depended on the event of the King's military
operations against the Scots. Among his troops there was
little of that feeling which separates professional soldiers from
the mass of a nation, and attaches them to their leaders. His
army, composed for the most part of recruits who regretted the
plough from which they had been violently taken, and who
were imbued with the religious and political sentiments then
prevalent throughout the country, was more formidable to him-
self than to the enemy. The Scots, encouraged by the heads
of the English opposition, and feebly resisted by the English
forces, marched across the Tweed and the Tyne, and encamped
on the borders of Yorkshire. And now the murmurs of dis-
content swelled into an uproar by which all spirits save one
were overawed. But the voice of Strafford was still for
Thorough ; and he, even in this extremity, showed a nature so
cruel and despotic, that his own pikemen were ready to tear
him in pieces.
There was yet one last expedient which, as the King flattered
himself, might save him from the misery of facing another
House of Commons. To the House of Lords he was less
averse. The Bishops were devoted to him ; and, though the
temporal peers were generally dissatisfied with his adminis-
tration, they were, as a class, so deeply interested in the
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 73
maintenance of order, and in the stability of ancient institutions,
that they were not likely to call for extensive reforms.
Departing from the uninterrupted practice of centuries, he
called a Great Council consisting of Lords alone. But the
Lords were too prudent to assume the unconstitutional
functions with which he wished to invest them. Without money,
without credit, without authority even in his own camp, he
yielded to the pressure of necessity. The Houses were
convoked ; and the elections proved that, since the spring, the
distrust and hatred with which the government was regarded
had made fearful progress.
In November 1640 met that renowned Parliament which, in
spite of many errors and disasters, is justly entitled to the
reverence and gratitude of all who, in any part of the world,
enjoy the blessings of constitutional government.
During the year which followed, no very important division
of opinion appeared in the Houses. The civil and ecclesiastical
administration had, through a period of near twelve years, been
so oppressive and so unconstitutional that even those classes
of which the inclinations are generally on the side of order and
authority were eager to promote popular reforms, and to bring
the instruments of tyranny to justice. It was enacted that no
interval of more than three years should ever elapse between
Parliament and Parliament, and that, if writs under the Great
Seal were not issued at the proper time, the returning officers
should, without such writs, call the constituent bodies together
for the choice of representatives. The Star Chamber, the
High Commission, the Council of York were swept away.
Men who, after suffering cruel mutilations, had been confined
in remote dungeons, regained their liberty. On the chief
ministers of the crown the vengeance of the nation was un-
sparingly wreaked. The Lord Keeper, the Primate, the Lord
Lieutenant were impeached. Finch saved himself by flight.
Laud was flung into the Tower. Strafford was impeached, and
at length put to death by act of attainder. On the same day
on which this act passed, the King gave his assent to a law
by which he bound himself not to adjourn, prorogue, or
dissolve the existing Parliament without its own consent.
After ten months of assiduous toil, the Houses, in September
1641, adjourned for a short vacation, and the King visited
Scotland. He with difficulty pacified that kingdom by consent-
ing not only to relinquish his plans of ecclesiastical reform, but
even to pass, with a very bad grace, an act declaring that
episcopacy was contrary to the word of God.
74 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
The recess of the English Parliament lasted six weeks. The
day on which the Houses met again is one of the most remark-
able epochs in our history. From that day dates the corporate
existence of the two great parties which have ever since
alternately governed the country. In one sense, indeed, the
distinction which then became obvious had always existed, and
always must exist. For it has its origin in diversities of temper,
of understanding, and of interest, which are found in all
societies, and which will be found till the human mind ceases
to be drawn in opposite directions by the charm of habit and by
the charm of novelty. Not only in politics, but in literature,
in art, in science, in surgery and mechanics, in navigation and
agriculture, nay, even in mathematics, we find this distinction.
Everywhere there is a class of men who cling with fondness to
whatever is ancient, and who, even when convinced by over-
powering reasons that innovation would be beneficial, consent
to it with many misgivings and forebodings. We find also
everywhere another class of men sanguine in hope, bold in
speculation, always pressing forward, quick to discern the
imperfections of whatever exists, disposed to think lightly of
the risks and inconveniences which attend improvements,
and disposed to give every change credit for being an improve-
ment. In the sentiments of both classes there is something to
approve. But of both the best specimens will be found not
far from the common frontier. The extreme section of one
class consists of bigoted dotards : the extreme section of the
other consists of shallow and reckless empirics.
There can be no doubt that in our very first Parliaments
might have been discerned a body of members anxious to
preserve, and a body eager to reform. But, while the sessions
of the legislature were short, these bodies did not take
definite and permanent forms, array themselves under re-
cognised leaders, or assume distinguishing names, badges, and
war cries. During the first months of the Long Parliament,
the indignation excited by many years of lawless oppression
was so strong and general that the House of Commons acted
as one man. Abuse after abuse disappeared without a struggle.
If a small minority of the representative body wished to retain
the Star Chamber and the High Commission, that minority,
overawed by the enthusiasm and by the numerical superiority
of the reformers, contented itself with secretly regretting
institutions which could not, with any hope of success, be
openly defended. At a later period the Royalists found it
convenient to antedate the separation between themselves and
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 75
their opponents, and to attribute the Act which restrained the
King from dissolving or proroguing the Parliament, the
Triennial Act, the impeachment of the ministers, and the
attainder of Strafford, to the faction which afterwards made war
on the King. But no artifice could be more disingenuous.
Every one of those strong measures was actively promoted by
the men who were afterwards foremost among the Cavaliers.
No repubUcan spoke of the long misgovernment of Charles
more severely than Colepepper. The most remarkable speech
in favour of the Triennial Bill was made by Digby. The im-
peachment of the Lord Keeper was moved by Falkland. The
demand that the Lord Lieutenant should be kept close prisoner
was made at the bar of the Lords by Hyde. Not till the law
attainting Strafford was proposed did the signs of serious dis-
union become visible. Even against that law, a law which
nothing but extreme necessity could justify, only about sixty
members of the House of Commons voted. It is certain that
Hyde was not in the minority, and that Falkland not only
voted with the majority, but spoke strongly for the bill. Even
the few who entertained a scruple about inflicting death by a
retrospective enactment thought it necessary to express the
utmost abhorrence of Strafford's character and administration.
But under this apparent concord a great schism was latent;
and when, in October 1641, the Parliament re-assembled after
a short recess, two hostile parties, essentially the same with
those which, under different names, have ever since contended,
and are still contending, for the direction of public affairs,
appeared confronting each other. During some years they
were designated as Cavaliers and Roundheads. They were
subsequently called Tories and Whigs ; nor does it seem that
these appellations are likely soon to become obsolete.
It would not be difficult to compose a lampoon or a pane-
gyric on either of these renowned factions. For no man not
utterly destitute of judgment and candour will deny that there
are many deep stains on the fame of the party to which he
belongs, or that the party to which he is opposed may justly
boast of many illustrious names, of many heroic actions, and
of many great services rendered to the State. The truth is
that, though both parties have often seriously erred, England
could have spared neither. If, in her institutions, freedom and
order, the advantages arising from innovation and the advantages
arising from prescription, have been combined to an extent
elsewhere unknown, we may attribute this happy peculiarity to
the strenuous conflicts and alternate victories of two rival
'j6 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
confederacies of statesmen, a confederacy zealous for authority
and antiquity, and a confederacy zealous for liberty and
progress.
It ought to be remembered that the difference between the
two great sections of English politicians has always been a
difference rather of degree than of principle. There were
certain limits on the right and on the left, which were very
rarely overstepped. A few enthusiasts on one side were ready
to lay all our laws and franchises at the feet of our Kings. A
few enthusiasts on the other side were bent on pursuing,
through endless civil troubles, their darling phantom of a
repubhc. But the great majority of those who fought for the
crown were averse to despotism ; and the great majority of
the champions of popular rights were averse to anarchy.
Twice, in the course of the seventeenth century, the two
parties suspended their dissensions, and united their strength
in a common cause. Their first coalition restored hereditary
monarchy. Their second coalition rescued constitutional
freedom.
It is also to be noted that these two parties have never been
the whole nation, nay, that they have never, taken together,
made up a majority of the nation. Between them has always
been a great mass, which has not steadfastly adhered to either,
which has sometimes remained inertly neutral, and has some-
times oscillated to and fro. That mass has more than once
passed in a few years from one extreme to the other, and back
again. Sometimes it has changed sides, merely because it was
tired of supporting the same men^ sometimes because it was
dismayed by its own excesses, sometimes because it had
expected impossibilities, and had been disappointed. But,
whenever it has leaned with its whole weight in either direction,
resistance has, for the time, been impossible.
When the rival parties first appeared in a distinct form, they
seemed to be not unequally matched. On the side of the
government was a large majority of the nobles, and of those
opulent and well descended gentlemen to whom nothing was
wanting of nobility but the name. These, with the dependents
whose support they could command, were no small power in
the state. On the same side were the great body of the clergy,
both the Universities, and all those laymen who were strongly
attached to episcopal government and to the Anglican ritual.
These respectable classes found themselves in the company of
some allies much less decorous than themselves. The Puritan
austerity drove to the King's faction all who made pleasure
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 77
their business, who affected gallantry, splendour of dress, or
taste in the lighter arts. With these went all who live by
amusing the leisure of others, from the painter and the comic
poet, down to the ropedancer and the Merry Andrew. For
these artists well knew that they might thrive under a superb
and luxurious despotism, but must starve under the rigid rule
of the precisians. In the same interest were the Roman
Catholics to a man. The Queen, a daughter of France, was
of their own faith. Her husband was known to be strongly
attached to her, and not a little in awe of her. Though
undoubtedly a Protestant on conviction, he regarded the pro-
fessors of the old religion with no ill will, and would gladly
have granted them a much larger toleration than he was dis-
posed to concede to the Presbyterians. If the opposition
obtained the mastery, it was probable that the sanguinary laws
enacted against Papists, in the reign of Elizabeth, would be
severely enforced. The Roman Catholics were therefore
induced by the strongest motives to espouse the cause of the
court. They in general acted with a caution which brought
on them the reproach of cowardice and lukewarmness : but it
is probable that, in maintaining great reserve, they consulted
the King's interest as well as their own. It was not for his
service that they should be conspicuous among his friends.
The main strength of the opposition lay among the small
freeholders in the country, and among the merchants and
shopkeepers of the towns. But these were headed by a
formidable minority of the aristocracy, a minority which
included the rich and powerful Earls of Northumberland, Bed-
ford, Warwick, Stamford, and Essex, and several other Lords
of great wealth and influence. In the same ranks was found
the whole body of Protestant Nonconformists, and most of
\hose members of the Established Church who still adhered to
the Calvinistic opinions which, forty years before, had been
generally held by the prelates and clergy. The municipal
corporations took, with few exceptions, the same side. In the
House of Commons the opposition preponderated, but not
very decidedly.
Neither party wanted strong arguments for the measures
which it was disposed to take. The reasonings of the most
enlightened RoyaUsts may be summed up thus: — "It is true
that great abuses have existed ; but they have been redressed.
It is true that precious rights have been invaded ; but they have
been vindicated and surrounded with new securities. The sittings
of the Estates of the realm have been, in defiance of ail prece-
78 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
dent and of the spirit of the constitution, intermitted during
eleven years ; but it has now been provided that henceforth
three years shall never elapse without a Parliament. The Star
Chamber, the High Commission, the Council of York, oppressed
and plundered us ; but those hateful courts have now ceased to
exist. The Lord Lieutenant aimed at establishing military
despotism ; but he has answered for his treason with his head.
The Primate tainted our worship with Popish rites, and
punished our scruples with Popish cruelty ; but he is awaiting
in the Tower the judgment of his peers. The Lord Keeper
sanctioned a plan, by which the property of every man in
England was placed at the mercy of the crown ; but he has
been disgraced, ruined, and compelled to take refuge in a
foreign land. The ministers of tyranny have expiated their
crimes. The victims of tyranny have been compensated for
their sufferings. Under such circumstances it would be most
unwise to persevere in that course which was justifiable and
necessary when we first met, after a long interval, and found
the whole administration one mass of abuses. It is time to take
heed that we do not so pursue our victory over despotism as to
run into anarchy. It was not in our power to overturn the bad
institutions which lately afflicted our country, without shocks
which have loosened the foundations of government. Now
that those institutions have fallen we must hasten to prop the
edifice which it was lately our duty to batter. Henceforth
it will be our wisdom to look with jealousy on schemes of in-
novation, and to guard from encroachment all the prerogatives
with which the law has, for the public good, armed the sovereign."
Such were the views of those men of whom the excellent
Falkland may be regarded as the leader. It was contended on
the other side with not less force, by men of not less ability
and virtue, that the safety which the liberties of the English
people enjoyed was rather apparent than real, and that the
arbitrary projects of the court would be resumed as soon as the
vigilance of the Commons was relaxed. True it was, — such
was the reasoning of Pym, of HoUis, and of Hampden, — that
many good laws had been passed : but, if good laws had been
sufficient to restrain the King, his subjects would have had
little reason ever to complain of his administration. The
recent statutes were surely not of more authority than the
Great Charter or the Petition of Right. Yet neither the Great
Charter, hallowed by the veneration of four centuries, nor the
Petition of Right, sanctioned, after mature reflection, and for
valuable consideration, by Charles himself, had been found
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 79
effectual for the protection of the people. If once the check
of fear were withdrawn, if once the spirit of opposition were
suffered to slumber, all the securities for English freedom
resolved themselves into a single one, the royal word ; and it
had been proved by a long and severe experience that the royal
word could not be trusted.
The two parties were still regarding each other with cautious
hostility, and had not yet measured their strength, when news
arrived which inflamed the passions and confirmed the opinions
of both. The great chieftains of Ulster, who, at the time of
the accession of James, had, after a long struggle, submitted to
the royal authority, had not long brooked the humiliation of
dependence. They had conspired against the English govern-
ment, and had been attainted of treason. Their immense
domains had been forfeited to the crown, and had soon been
peopled by thousands of English and Scotch emigrants. The
new settlers were, in civilisation and intelligence, far superior
to the native population, and sometimes abused their superiority.
The animosity produced by difference of race was increased by
difference of religion. Under the iron rule of Wentworth,
scarcely a murmur was heard : but, when that strong pressure
was withdrawn, when Scotland had set the example of successful
resistance, when England was distracted by internal quarrels,
the smothered rage of the Irish broke forth into acts of fearful
violence. On a sudden, the aboriginal population rose on the
colonists. A war, to which national and theological hatred
gave a character of peculiar ferocity, desolated Ulster, and
spread to the neighbouring provinces. The castle of Dublin
was scarcely thought secure. Every post brought to London
exaggerated accounts of outrages which, without any exaggera-
tion, were sufficient to move pity and horror. These evil
tidings roused to the height the zeal of both the great parties
which were marshalled against each other at Westminster.
The Royalists maintained that it was the first duty of every
good Englishman and Protestant, at such a crisis, to strengthen
the hands of the sovereign. To the opposition it seemed that
there were now stronger reasons than ever for thwarting and
restraining him. That the commonwealth was in danger was
undoubtedly a good reason for giving large powers to a trust-
worthy magistrate : but it was a good reason for taking away
powers from a magistrate who was at heart a public enemy.
To raise a great army had always been the King's first object.
A great army must now be raised. It was to be feared that,
unless some new securities were devised, the forces levied for
80 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
the reduction of Ireland would be employed against the liberties
of England. Nor was this all. A horrible suspicion, unjust
indeed, but not altogether unnatural, had arisen in many minds.
The Queen was an avowed Roman Catholic : the King was
not regarded by the Puritans, whom he had mercilessly per-
secuted, as a sincere Protestant ; and so notorious was his
duplicity, that there was no treachery of which his subjects
might not, with some show of reason, believe him capable. It
was soon whispered that the rebellion of the Roman Catholics
of Ulster was part of a vast work of darkness which had been
planned at Whitehall.
After some weeks of prelude, the first great parliamentary
conflict between the parties which have ever since contended,
and are still contending, for the government of the nation, took
place on the twenty-second of November 1641. It was moved
by the opposition, that the House of Commons should present
to the King a remonstrance, enumerating the faults of his
administration from the time of his accession, and expressing
the distrust with which his policy was still regarded by his
people. That assembly, which a few months before had been
unanimous in calling for the reform of abuses, was now divided
into two fierce and eager factions of nearly equal strength.
After a hot debate of many hours, the remonstrance was carried
by only eleven votes.
The result of this struggle was highly favourable to the con-
servative party. It could not be doubted that only some great
indiscretion could prevent them from shortly obtaining the
predominance in the Lower House. The Upper House was
already their own. Nothing was wanting to insure their
success, but that the King should, in all his conduct, show
respect for the laws and scrupulous good faith towards hissubjects.
His first measures promised well. He had, it seemed, at
last discovered that an entire change of system was necessary,
and had wisely made up his mind to what could no longer be
avoided. He declared his determination to govern in harmony
with the Commons, and, for that end, to call to his councils
men in whose talents and character the Commons might place
confidence. Nor was the selection ill made. Falkland, Hyde,
and Colepepper, all three distinguished by the part which they
had taken in reforming abuses and in punishing evil ministers,
were invited to become the confidential advisers of the crown,
and were solemnly assured by Charles that he would take no
step in any way affecting the Lower House of Parliament
without their privity.
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 8 I
Had he kept this promise, it cannot be doubted that the
reaction which was aheady in progress would very soon have
become quite as strong as the most respectable Royalists would
have desired. Already the violent members of the opposition
had begun to despair of the fortunes of their party, to tremble
for their own safety, and to talk of seUing their estates and
emigrating to America. That the fair prospects which had
begun to open before the King were suddenly overcast, that
his life was darkened by adversity, and at length shortened
by violence, is to be attributed to his own faithlessness and
contempt of law.
The truth seems to be that he detested both the parties into
which the House of Commons was divided : nor is this
strange ; for in both those parties the love of liberty and the
love of order were mingled, though in different proportions.
The advisers whom necessity had compelled him to call round
him were by no means men after his own heart. They had
joined in condemning his tyranny, in abridging his power, and
in punishing his instruments. They were now indeed prepared
to defend by strictly legal means his strictly legal prerogatives ;
but they would have recoiled with horror from the thought of
reviving Wentworth's projects of Thorough. They were, there-
fore, in the King's opinion, traitors, who diftered only in the
degree of their seditious malignity from Pym and Hampden.
He accordingly, a few days after he had promised the chiefs
of the constitutional Royalists that no step of importance
should be taken without their knowledge, formed a resolution
the most momentous of his whole life, carefully concealed that
resolution from them, and executed it in a manner which
overwhelmed them with shame and dismay. He sent the
Attorney General to impeach Pym, HoUis, Hampden, and
other members of the House of Commons of high treason at
the bar of the House of Lords. Not content with this flagrant
violation of the Great Charter and of the uninterrupted practice
of centuries, he went in person, accompanied by armed men,
to seize the leaders of the opposition within the walls of
Parliament.
The attempt failed. The accused members had left the
House a short time before Charles entered it. A sudden
and violent revulsion of feeling, both in the Parliament and in
the country, followed. The most favourable view that has
ever been taken of the King's conduct on this occasion by his
most partial advocates is that he had weakly suffered himself
to be hurried into a gross indiscretion by the evil counsels of
82 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
his wife and of his courtiers. But the general voice loudly
charged him with far deeper guilt. At the very moment at
which his subjects, after a long estrangement produced by his
maladministration, were returning to him with feelings of
confidence and affection, he had aimed a deadly blow at all
their dearest rights, at the privileges of Parliament, at the very
principle of trial by jury. He had shown that he considered
opposition to his arbitrary designs as a crime to be expiated
only by blood. He had broken faith, not only with his Great
Council and with his people, but with his own adherents. He
had done what, but for an unforeseen accident, would probably
have produced a bloody conflict round the Speaker's chair.
Those who had the chief sway in the Lower House now felt
that not only their power and popularity, but their lands and
their necks, were staked on the event of the struggle in which
they were engaged. The flagging zeal of the party opposed to
the court revived in an instant. During the night which followed
the outrage the whole City of London was in arms. In a few
hours the roads leading to the capital were covered with mul-
titudes of yeomen spurring hard to Westminster with the
badges of the parliamentary cause in their hats. In the House
of Commons the opposition became at once irresistible, and
carried, by more than two votes to one, resolutions of unpre-
cedented violence. Strong bodies of the trainbands, regularly
relieved, mounted guard round Westminster Hall. The gates
of the King's palace were daily besieged by a furious multitude
whose taunts and execrations were heard even in the presence
chamber, and who could scarcely be kept out of the royal
apartments by the gentlemen of the household. Had Charles
remained much longer in his stormy capital, it is probable that
the Commons would have found a plea for making him, under
outward forms of respect, a state prisoner.
He quitted London, never to return till the day of a terrible
and memorable reckoning had arrived. A negotiation began
which occupied many months. Accusations and recriminations
passed backward and forward between the contending parties.
All accommodation had become impossible. The sure punish-
ment which waits on habitual perfidy had at length overtaken
the King. It was to no purpose that he now pawned his royal
word, and invoked heaven to witness the sincerity of his
professions. The distrust with which his adversaries regarded
him was not to be removed by oaths or treaties. They were
convinced that they could be safe only when he was utterly
helpless. Their demand, therefore, was, that he should sur-
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 83
render, not only those prerogatives which he had usurped in
violation of ancient laws and of his own recent promises, but
also other prerogatives which the English Kings had possessed
from time immemorial, and continue to possess at the present
day. No minister must be appointed, no peer created without
the consent of the Houses. Above all, the sovereign must
resign that supreme military authority which, from time beyond
all memory, had appertained to the regal office.
That Charles would comply with such demands while he
had any means of resistance was not to be expected. Yet it
will be difficult to show that the Houses could safely have
exacted less. They were truly in a most embarrassing position.
The great majority of the nation was firmly attached to heredi-
tary monarchy. Those who held republican opinions were as
yet few, and did not venture to speak out. It was therefore
impossible to abolish kingly government. Yet it was plain
that no confidence could be placed in the King. It would
have been absurd in those who knew, by recent proof, that he
was bent on destroying them, to content themselves with
presenting to him another Petition of Right, and receiving
from him fresh promises similar to those which he had
repeatedly made and broken. Nothing but the want of an
army had prevented him from entirely subverting the old
constitution of the realm. It was now necessary to levy a
great regular army for the conquest of Ireland ; and it would
therefore have been mere insanity to leave him in possession
of that plenitude of military authority which his ancestors had
enjoyed.
When a country is in the situation in which England then
was, when the kingly office is regarded with love and venera-
tion, but the person who fills that office is hated and distrusted,
it should seem that the course which ought to be taken is
obvious. The dignity of the office should be preserved ; the
person should be discarded. Thus our ancestors acted in
1399 and in 1689. Had there been, in 1642, any man
occupying a position similar to that which Henry of Lancaster
occupied at the time of the deposition of Richard the Second,
and which the Prince of Orange occupied at the time of the
deposition of James the Second, it is probable that the Houses
would have changed the dynasty, and would have made no
formal change in the constitution. The new King, called to
the throne by their choice, and dependent on their support,
would have been under the necessity of governing in conformity
with their wishes and opinions. But there was no prince of
84 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
the blood royal in the parliamentary party ; and, though that
party contained many men of high rank and many men of
eminent ability, there was none who towered so conspicuously
above the rest that he could be proposed as a candidate for
the crown. As there was to be a King, and as no new King
was to be found, it was necessary to leave the regal title to
Charles. Only one course, therefore, was left : and that was
to disjoin the regal title from the regal prerogatives.
The change which the Houses proposed to make in our
institutions, though it seems exorbitant, when distinctly set
forth and digested into articles of capitulation, really amounts
to little more than the change which, in the next generation,
was effected by the Revolution. It is true that, at the
Revolution, the sovereign was not deprived by law of the
power of naming his ministers : but it is equally true that,
since the Revolution, no ministry has been able to remain in
office six months in opposition to the sense of the House of
Commons. It is true that the sovereign still possesses the
power of creating peers, and the more important power of the
sword : but it is equally true that in the exercise of these
powers the sovereign has, ever since the Revolution, been
guided by advisers who possess the confidence of the repre-
sentatives of the nation. In fact, the leaders of the Round-
head party in 1642, and the statesmen who, about half a
century later, effected the Revolution, had exactly the same
object in view. That object was to terminate the contest
between the crown and the Parliament, by giving to the
Parliament a supreme control over the executive administra-
tion. The statesmen of the Revolution effected this indirectly
by changing the dynasty. The Roundheads of 1642, being
unable to change the dynasty, were compelled to take a direct
course towards their end.
We cannot, however, wonder that the demands of the
opposition, importing as they did a complete and formal
transfer to the Parliament of powers which had always
belonged to the Crown, should have shocked that great party
of which the characteristics are respect for constituted
authority and dread of violent innovation. That party had
recently been in hopes of obtaining by peaceable means the
ascendency in the House of Commons ; but every such hope
had been blighted. The duplicity of Charles had made his
old enemies irreconcileable, had driven back into the ranks of
the disaffected a crowd of moderate men who were in the very
act of coming over to his side, and had so cruelly mortified his
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 85
best friends that they had for a time stood aloof in silent
shame and resentment. Now, however, the constitutional
Royalists were forced to make their choice between two
dangers ; and they thought it their duty rather to rally round a
prince whose past conduct they condemned, and whose word
inspired them with little confidence, than to suffer the regal
office to be degraded, and the polity of the realm to be entirely
remodelled. With such feelings, many men whose virtues and
abilities would have done honour to any cause ranged them-
selves on the side of the King.
In August 1642 the sword was at length drawn; and soon,
in almost every shire of the kingdom, two hostile factions
appeared in arms against each other. It is not easy to say
which of the contending parties was at first the more formid-
able. The Houses commanded London and the counties
round London, the fleet, the navigation of the Thames, and
most of the large towns and seaports. They had at their
disposal almost all the military stores of the kingdom, and
were able to raise duties, both on goods imported from foreign
countries, and on some important products of domestic
industry. The King was ill provided with artillery and
ammunition. The taxes which he laid on the rural districts
occupied by his troops produced, it is probable, a sum far less
than that which the Parliament drew from the city of London
alone. He relied, indeed, chiefly, for pecuniary aid, on the
munificence of his opulent adherents. Many of these
mortgaged their land, pawned their jewels, and broke up
their silver chargers and christening bowls, in order to assist
him. But experience has fully proved that the voluntary
liberality of individuals, even in times of the greatest excite-
ment, is a poor financial resource when compared with severe
and methodical taxation, which presses on the willing and
unwilling alike.
Charles, however, had one advantage, which, if he had used
it well, would have more than compensated for the want of
stores and money, and which, notwithstanding his misrnanage-
ment, gave him, during some months, a superiority in the war.
His troops at first fought much better than those of the
Parliament. Both armies, it is true, were almost entirely
composed of men who had never seen a field of battle.
Nevertheless, the difference was great. The parliamentary
ranks were filled with hirelings whom want and idleness had
induced to enlist. Hampden's regiment was regarded as one
of the best ; and even Hampden's regiment was described by
86 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Cromwell as a mere rabble of tapsters and serving men out of
place. The royal army, on the other hand, consisted in great
part of gentlemen, high spirited, ardent, accustomed to
consider dishonour as more terrible than death, accustomed
to fencing, to the use of fire arms, to bold riding, and to manly
and perilous sport, which has been well called the image of
war. Such gentlemen, mounted on their favourite horses, and
commanding little bands, composed of their younger brothers,
grooms, gamekeepers and huntsmen, were, from the very first
day on which they took the field, qualified to play their part
with credit in a skirmish. The steadiness, the prompt
obedience, the mechanical precision of movement, which are
characteristic of the regular soldier, these gallant volunteers
never attained. But they were at first opposed to enemies as
undisciplined as themselves, and far less active, athletic, and
daring. For a time, therefore, the Cavaliers were successful in
almost every encounter.
The Houses had also been unfortunate in the choice of a
general. The rank and wealth of the Earl of Essex made him
one of the most important members of the parliamentary party.
He had borne arms on the Continent with credit, and, when
the war began, had as high a military reputation as any man in
the country. But it soon appeared that he was unfit for the
post of Commander in Chief. He had little energy and no
originality. The methodical tactics which he had learned in
the war of the Palatinate did not save him from the disgrace
of being surprised and baffled by such a Captain as Rupert,
who could claim no higher fame than that of an enterprising
partisan.
Nor were the officers who held the chief commissions under
Essex qualified to supply what was wanting in him. For this,
indeed, the Houses are scarcely to be blamed. In a country
which had not, within the memory of the oldest person living,
made war on a great scale by land, generals of tried skill and
valour were not to be found. It was necessary, therefore, in
the first instance, to trust untried men ; and the preference
was naturally given to men distinguished either by their
station, or by the abilities which they had displayed in
parliament. In scarcely a single instance, however, was the
selection fortunate. Neither the grandees nor the orators
proved good soldiers. The Earl of Stamford, one of the
greatest nobles of England, was routed by the Royalists at
Stratton. Nathaniel Fiennes, inferior to none of his contem-
poraries in talents for civil business, disgraced himself by the
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 87
pusillanimous surrender of Bristol, Indeed, of all the states-
men who at this juncture accepted high military commands,
Hampden alone appears to have carried into the camp the
capacity and strength of mind which had made him eminent
in politics.
When the war had lasted a year, the advantage was decidedly
with the Royalists. They were victorious, both in the western
and in the northern counties. They had wrested Bristol, the
second city in the kingdom, from the Parliament. They had
won several battles, and had not sustained a single serious or
ignominious defeat. Among the Roundheads adversity had
begun to produce dissension and discontent. The Parliament
was kept in alarm, sometimes by plots, and sometimes by
riots. It was thought necessary to fortify London against the
royal army, and to hang some disaffected citizens at their own
doors. Several of the most distinguished peers who had
hitherto remained at Westminster fled to the court at Oxford ;
nor can it be doubted that, if the operations of the Cavaliers
had, at this season, been directed by a sagacious and powerful
mind, Charles would soon have marched in triumph to
Whitehall.
But the King suffered the auspicious moment to pass away ;
and it never returned. In August 1643 he sate down before
the city of Gloucester. That city was defended by the
inhabitants and by the garrison, with a determination such as
had not, since the commencement of the war, been shown by
the adherents of the Parliament. The emulation of London
was excited. The trainbands of the City volunteered to march
wherever their services might be required. A great force was
speedily collected, and began to move westward. The siege
of Gloucester was raised. The Royalists in every part of the
kingdom were disheartened : the spirit of the parliamentary
party revived ; and the apostate Lords, who had lately fled
from Westminster to Oxford, hastened back from Oxford to
Westminster.
And now a new and alarming class of symptoms began to
appear in the distempered body politic. There had been,
from the first, in the parliamentary party, some men whose
minds were set on objects from which the majority of that
party would have shrunk with horror. These men were, in
religion. Independents. They conceived that every Christian
congregation had, under Christ, supreme jurisdiction in things
spiritual ; that appeals to provincial and national synods were
scarcely less unscriptural than appeals to the Court of Arches, or
D 34
QQ HISTORY OF ENGLAND
to the Vatican ; and that Popery, Prelacy, and Presbyterian ism
were merely three forms of one great apostasy. In politics the
Independents were, to use the phrase of their time, root and
branch men, or, to use the kindred phrase of our own time,
radicals. Not content with limiting the power of the monarch,
they were desirous to erect a commonwealth on the ruins of
the old English polity At first they had been inconsiderable,
both in numbers and in weight ; but before the war had lasted
two years they became, not indeed the largest, but the most
powerful faction in the country. Some of the old parlia-
mentary leaders had been removed by death ; and others had
forfeited the public confidence. Pym had been borne, with
princely honours, to a grave among the Plantagenets.
Hampden had fallen, as became him, while vainly endeavour-
ing, by his heroic example, to inspire his followers with
courage to face the fiery cavalry of Rupert. Bedford had
been untrue to the cause. Northumberland was known to be
lukewarm. Essex and his lieutenants had shown little vigour
and ability in the conduct of military operations. At such a
conjuncture it was that the Independent party, ardent, resolute,
and uncompromising, began to raise its head, both in the camp
and in the House of Commons.
The soul of that party was Oliver Cromwell. Bred to
peaceful occupations, he had, at more than forty years of age,
accepted a commission in the parliamentary army. No sooner
had he become a soldier than he discerned, with the keen
glance of genius, what Essex and men like Essex, with all
their experience, were unable to perceive. He saw precisely
where the strength of the Royalists lay, and by what means
alone that strength could be overpowered. He saw that it
was necessary to reconstruct the army of the Parliament. He
saw also that there were abundant and excellent materials for
the purpose, materials less showy, indeed, but more solid, than
those of which the gallant squadrons of the King were
composed. It was necessary to look for recruits who were not
mere mercenaries, for recruits of decent station and grave
character, fearing God and zealous for public liberty. With
such men he filled his own regiment, and, while he subjected
them to a discipline more rigid than had ever before been
known in England, he administered to their intellectual and
moral nature stimulants of fearful potency.
The events of the year 1644 fully proved the superiority of
his abilities. In the south, where Essex held the command,
the parliamentary forces underwent a succession of shameful
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 89
disasters ; but in the north the victory of Marston Moor fully
compensated for all that had been lost elsewhere. That
victory was not a more serious blow to the Royalists than to
the party which had hitherto been dominant at Westminster ;
for it was notorious that the day, disgracefully lost by the
Presbyterians, had been retrieved by the energy of Cromwell,
and by the steady valour of the warriors whom he had trained.
These events produced the Selfdenying Ordinance and the
new model of the army. Under decorous pretexts, and with
every mark of respect, Essex and most of those who had held
high posts under him were removed ; and the conduct of the
war was intrusted to very different hands. Fairfax, a brave
soldier, but of mean understanding and irresolute temper, was
the nominal Lord General of the forces ; but Cromwell was
their real head.
Cromwell made haste to organize the whole army on the
same principles on which he had organized his own regiment.
As soon as this process was complete, the event of the war
was decided. The Cavaliers had now to encounter natural
courage equal to their own, enthusiasm stronger than their
own, and discipline such as was utterly wanting to them. It
soon became a proverb that the soldiers of Fairfax and
Cromwell were men of a different breed from the soldiers of
Essex. At Naseby took place the first great encounter
between the Royalists and the remodelled army of the Houses.
The victory of the Roundheads was complete and decisive.
It was followed by other triumphs in rapid succession. In
a few months the authority of the Parliament was fully
established over the whole kingdom. Charles fled to the
Scots, and was by them, in a manner which did not much
exalt their national character, delivered up to his English
subjects.
While the event of the war was still doubtful, the Houses
had put the Primate to death, had interdicted, within the
sphere of their authority, the use of the Liturgy, and had
required all men to subscribe that renowned instrument known
by the name of the Solemn League and Covenant. When the
struggle was over, the work of innovation and revenge was
pushed on v/ith still greater ardour. The ecclesiastical polity
of the kingdom was remodelled. Most of the old clergy were
ejected from their benefices. Fines, often of ruinous amount,
were laid on the Royalists, already impoverished by large aids
furnished to the King. Many estates were confiscated. Many
proscribed Cavaliers found it expedient to purchase, at an
90 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
enormous cost, the protection of eminent members of the
victorious party. Large domains belonging to the crown, to
the bishops, and to the chapters were seized, and either
granted away or put up to auction. In consequence of these
spoliations, a great part of the soil of England was at once
offered for sale. As money was scarce, as the market was
glutted, as the title was insecure, and as the awe inspired by
powerful bidders prevented free competition, the prices were
often merely nominal. Thus many old and honourable
families disappeared and were heard of no more ; and many
new men rose rapidly to affluence.
But, while the Houses were employing their authority thus,
it suddenly passed out of their hands. It had been obtained
by calling into existence a power which could not be controlled.
In the summer of 1647, about twelve months after the last
fortress of the CavaHers had submitted to the Parliament, the
Parliament was compelled to submit to its own soldiers.
Thirteen years followed, during which England was, under
various names and forms, really governed by the sword. Never
before that time, or since that time, was the civil power in our
country subjected to military dictation.
The army which now became supreme in the State was an
army very different from any that has since been seen among
us. At present the pay of the common soldier is not such as
can seduce any but the humblest class of English labourers
from their calling. A barrier almost impassable separates him
from the commissioned officer. The great majority of those
who rise high in the service rise by purchase. So numerous
and extensive are the remote dependencies of England, that
every man who enlists in the line must expect to pass many
years in exile, and some years in climates unfavourable to the
health and vigour of the European race. The army of the Long
Parliament was raised for home service. The pay of the private
soldier was much above the wages earned by the great body of
the people; and, if he distinguished himself by intelligence and
courage, he might hope to attain high commands. The ranks
were accordingly composed of persons superior in station and
education to the multitude. These persons, sober, moral,
diligent, and accustomed to reflect, had been induced to take
up arms, not by the pressure of want, not by the love of novelty
and license, not by the arts of recruiting officers, but by religious
and political zeal, mingled with the desire of distinction and
promotion. The boast of the soldiers, as we find it recorded
in their solemn resolutions, was, that they had not been forced
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 9 1
into the service, nor had enlisted chiefly for the sake of lucre,
that they were no janissaries, but freeborn Englishmen, who
had, of their own accord, put their hves in jeopardy for the
liberties and religion of England, and whose right and duty it
was to watch over the welfare of the nation which they had
saved.
A force thus composed might, without injury to its efficiency,
be indulged in some liberties which, if allowed to any other
troops, would have proved subversive of all discipline. In
general, soldiers who should form themselves into political
clubs, elect delegates, and pass resolutions on high questions of
state, would soon break loose from all control, would cease to
form an army, and would become the worst and most dan-
gerous of mobs. Nor would it be safe, in our time, to tolerate
in any regiment religious meetings, at which a corporal versed
in Scripture should lead the devotions of his less gifted
colonel, and admonish a backsliding major. But such was the
intelligence, the gravity, and the selfcommand of the warriors
whom Cromwell had trained, that in their camp a political
organization and a religious organization could exist without
destroying military organization. The same men, who, off
duty, were noted as demagogues and field preachers, were
distinguished by steadiness, by the spirit of order, and by
prompt obedience on watch, on drill, and on the field of
battle.
In war this strange force was irresistible. The stubborn
courage characteristic of the English people was, by the system
of Cromwell, at once regulated and stimulated. Other leaders
have maintained order as strict. Other leaders have inspired
their followers with zeal as ardent. But in his camp alone the
most rigid discipline was found in company with the fiercest
enthusiasm. His troops moved to victory with the precision
of machines, while burning with the wildest fanaticism of
Crusaders. From the time when the army was remodelled to
the time when it was disbanded, it never found, either in the
British islands or on the Continent, an enemy who could stand
its onset. In England, Scotland, Ireland, Flanders, the
Puritan warriors, often surrounded by difficulties, sometimes
contending against threefold odds, not only never failed to
conquer, but never failed to destroy and break in pieces what-
ever force was opposed to them. They at length came to
regard the day of battle as a day of certain triumph, and
marched against the most renowned battalions of Europe with
disdainful confidence. Turenne was startled by the shout of
92 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Stern exultation with which his EngUsh aUies advanced to the
combat, and expressed the dehght of a true soldier, when he
learned that it was ever the fashion of Cromwell's pikemen to
rejoice greatly when they beheld the enemy ; and the banished
Cavaliers felt an emotion of national pride, when they saw
a brigade of their countrymen, outnumbered by foes and
abandoned by allies, drive before it in headlong rout the finest
infantry of Spain, and force a passage into a counterscarp which
had just been pronounced impregnable by the ablest of the
Marshals of France.
But that which chiefly distinguished the army of Cromwell
from other armies was the austere morality and the fear of God
which pervaded all ranks. It is acknowledged by the most
zealous Royalists that, in that singular camp, no oath was heard,
no drunkenness or gambling was seen, and that, during the long
dominion of the soldiery, the property of the peaceable citizen
and the honour of woman were held sacred. If outrages were
committed, they were outrages of a very different kind from
those of which a victorious army is generally guilty. No servant
girl complained of the rough gallantry of the redcoats. Not an
ounce of plate was taken from the shops of the goldsmiths.
But a Pelagian sermon, or a window on which the Virgin and
Child were painted, produced in the Puritan ranks an excite-
ment which it required the utmost exertions of the officers to
quell. One of Cromwell's chief difficulties was to restrain his
musketeers and dragoons from invading by main force the
pulpits of ministers whose discourses, to use the language of
that time, were not savoury ; and too many of our cathedrals
still bear the marks of the hatred with which those stern spirits
regarded every vestige of Popery.
To keep down the English people was no light task even for
that army. No sooner was the first pressure of military tyranny
felt, than the nation, unbroken to such servitude, began to
struggle fiercely. Insurrections broke out even in those coun-
ties which, during the recent war, had been the most submissive
to the Parliament. Indeed, the Parliament itself abhorred its
old defenders more than its old enemies, and was desirous to
come to terms of accommodation with Charles at the expense
of the troops. In Scotland, at the same time, a coalition was
formed between the Royalists and a large body of Presbyterians
who regarded the doctrines of the Independents with detesta-
tion. At length the storm burst. There were risings in
Norfolk, Suffolk, Essex, Kent, Wales. The fleet in the Thames
suddenly hoisted the royal colours, stood out to sea, and
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 93
menaced the southern coast. A great Scottish force crossed
the frontier and advanced into Lancashire. It might well be
suspected that these movements were contemplated with secret
complacency by a majority both of the Lords and of the
Commons.
But the yoke of the army was not to be so shaken off.
While Fairfax suppressed the risings in the neighbourhood of
the capital, Oliver routed the Welsh insurgents, and, leaving
their castles in ruins, marched against the Scots. His troops
were few, when compared with the invaders ; but he was little
in the habit of counting his enemies. The Scottish army was
utterly destroyed. A change in the Scottish government
followed. An administration, hostile to the King, was formed
at Edinburgh ; and Cromwell, more than ever the darling of
his soldiers, returned in triumph to London.
And now a design, to which, at the commencement of the
civil war, no man would have dared to allude, and which was
not less inconsistent with the Solemn League and Covenant
than with the old law of England, began to take a distinct
form. The austere warriors who ruled the nation had, during
some months, meditated a fearful vengeance on the captive
King. When and how the scheme originated ; whether it
spread from the general to the ranks, or from the ranks
to the general ; whether it is to be ascribed to policy
using fanaticism as a tool, or to fanaticism bearing down
policy with headlong impulse, are questions which, even
at this day, cannot be answered with perfect confidence.
It seems, however, on the whole, probable that he who
seemed to lead was really forced to follow, and that, on
this occasion, as on another great occasion a few years
later, he sacrificed his own judgment and his own inclinations
to the wishes of the army. For the power which he had
called into existence was a power which even he could not
always control ; and, that he might ordinarily command, it was
necessary that he should sometimes obey. He publicly
protested that he was no mover in the matter, that the first
steps had been taken without his privity, that he could not
advise the Parliament to strike the blow, but that he submitted
his own feelings to the force of circumstances which seemed to
him to indicate the purposes of providence. It has been the
fashion to consider these professions as instances of the
hypocrisy which is vulgarly imputed to him. But even those
who pronounce him a hypocrite will scarcely venture to call
him a fool. They are therefore bound to show that he had
94 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
some purpose to serve by secretly stimulating the army to take
that course which he did not venture openly to recommend.
It would be absurd to suppose that he, who was never by
his respectable enemies represented as wantonly cruel or
implacably vindictive, would have taken the most important
step of his life under the influence of mere malevolence. He
was far too wise a man not to know, when he consented to
shed that august blood, that he was doing a deed which was
inexpiable, and which would move the grief and horror, not
only of the Royalists, but of nine tenths of those who had
stood by the Parliament. Whatever visions may have deluded
others, he was assuredly dreaming neither of a republic on the
antique pattern, nor of the millennial reign of the saints. If
he already aspired to be himself the founder of a new dynasty,
it was plain that Charles the First was a less formidable
competitor than Charles the Second would be. At the
moment of the death of Charles the First the loyalty of every
Cavalier would be transferred, unimpaired, to Charles the
Second. Charles the First was a captive ; Charles the Second
would be at liberty. Charles the First was an object of
suspicion and dislike to a large proportion of those who yet
shuddered at the thought of slaying him ; Charles the Second
would excite all the interest which belongs to distressed youth
and innocence. It is impossible to believe that considerations
so obvious, and so important, escaped the most profound
politician of that age. The truth is that Cromwell had, at one
time, meant to mediate between the throne and the Parliament,
and to reorganize the distracted State by the power of the
sword, under the sanction of the royal name. In this design
he persisted till he was compelled to abandon it by the
refractory temper of the soldiers, and by the incurable
duplicity of the King. A party in the camp began to clamour
for the head of the traitor, who was for treating with Agag.
Conspiracies were formed. Threats of impeachment were
loudly uttered. A mutiny broke out, which all the vigour and
resolution of Oliver could hardly quell. And though, by a
judicious mixture of severity and kindness, he succeeded in
restoring order, he saw that it would be in the highest degree
difficult and perilous to contend against the rage of warriors,
who regarded the fallen tyrant as their foe, and as the foe of
their God.
At the same time it became more evident than ever that the
King could not be trusted. The vices of Charles had grown
upon him. They were, indeed, vices which difficulties and
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 95
perplexities generally bring out in the strongest light.
Cunning is the natural defence of the weak. A prince,
therefore, who is habitually a deceiver when at the height of
power, is not likely to learn frankness in the midst of
embarrassments and distresses. Charles was not only a most
unscrupulous but a most unlucky dissembler. There never
was a politician to whom so many frauds and falsehoods
were brought home by undeniable evidence. He publicly
recognised the Houses at Westminster as a legal Parliament,
and, at the same time, made a private minute in council,
declaring the recognition null. He pubUcly disclaimed all
thought of calling in foreign aid against his people : he
privately solicited aid from France, from Denmark, and from
Loraine. He publicly denied that he employed Papists : at
the same time he privately sent to his generals directions to
employ every Papist that would serve. He publicly took the
sacrament at Oxford, as a pledge that he never would even
connive at Popery : he privately assured his wife, that he
intended to tolerate Popery in England ; and he authorised
Lord Glamorgan to promise that Popery should be established
in Ireland. Then he attempted to clear himself at his agent's
expense. Glamorgan received, in the royal handwriting,
reprimands intended to be read by others, and eulogies which
were to be seen only by himself. To such an extent, indeed,
had insincerity now tainted the King's whole nature, that his
most devoted friends could not refrain from complaining to
each other, with bitter grief and shame, of his crooked politics.
His defeats, they said, gave them less pain than his intrigues.
Since he had been a prisoner, there was no section of the
victorious party which had not been the object both of his
flatteries and of his machinations : but never was he more
unfortunate than when he attempted at once to cajole and to
undermine Cromwell.
Cromwell had to determine whether he would put to hazard
the attachment of his party, the attachment of his army, his
own greatness, nay his own life, in an attempt, which would
probably have been vain, to save a prince whom no engage-
ment could bind. With many struggles and misgivings, and
probably not without many prayers, the decision was made.
Charles was left to his fate. The military saints resolved that,
in defiance of the old laws of the realm, and of the almost
universal sentiment of the nation, the King should expiate his
crimes with his blood. He for a time expected a death like
that of his unhappy predecessors, Edward the Second and
*D34
96 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Richard the Second. But he was in no danger of such
treason. Those who had him in their gripe were not mid-
night stabbers. What they did they did in order that it
might be a spectacle to heaven and earth, and that it might
be held in everlasting remembrance. They enjoyed keenly
the very scandal which they gave. That the ancient constitu-
tion and the public opinion of England were directly opposed
to regicide made regicide seem strangely fascinating to a party
bent on effecting a complete political and social revolution.
In order to accomplish their purpose, it was necessary that
they should first break in pieces every part of the machinery of
the government ; and this necessity was rather agreeable than
painful to them. The Commons passed a vote tending to
accommodation with the King. The soldiers excluded the
majority by force. The Lords unanimously rejected the
proposition that the King should be brought to trial. Their
house was instantly closed. No court, known to the law,
would take on itself the office of judging the fountain of
justice. A revolutionary tribunal was created. That tribunal
pronounced Charles a tyrant, a traitor, a murderer, and a
public enemy ; and his head was severed from his shoulders
before thousands of spectators, in front of the banqueting hall
of his own palace.
In no long time it became manifest that those political and
religious zealots, to whom this deed is to be ascribed, had
committed, not only a crime, but an error. They had given
to a prince, hitherto known to his people chiefly by his faults,
an opportunity of displaying, on a great theatre, before the
eyes of all nations and all ages, some qualities which irresistibly
call forth the admiration and love of mankind, the high spirit
of a gallant gentleman, the patience and meekness of a
penitent Christian. Nay, they had so contrived their revenge
that the very man whose whole life had been a series of
attacks on the liberties of England now seemed to die a
martyr in the cause of those liberties. No demagogue ever
produced such an impression on the public mind as the
captive King who, retaining in that extremity all his regal
dignity, and confronting death with dauntless courage, gave
utterance to the feelings of his oppressed people, manfully
refused to plead before a court unknown to the law, appealed
from military violence to the principles of the constitution,
asked by what right the House of Commons had been purged
of its most respectable members and the House of Lords
deprived of its legislative functions, and told his weeping
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 97
hearers that he was defending not only his own cause, but
theirs. His long misgovernment, his innumerable perfidies,
were forgotten, His memory was, in the minds of the great
majority of his subjects, associated with those free institutions
which he had, during many years, laboured to destroy : for
those free institutions had perished with him, and, amidst the
mournful silence of a community kept down by arms, had
been defended by his voice alone. From that day began
a reaction in favour of monarchy and of the exiled house,
a reaction which never ceased till the throne had again been
set up in all its old dignity.
At first, however, the slayers of the King seemed to have
derived new energy from that sacrament of blood by which
they had bound themselves closely together, and separated
themselves for ever from the great body of their countrymen.
England was declared a commonwealth. The House of
Commons, reduced to a small number of members, was
nominally the supreme power in the State. In fact, the army
and its great chief governed every thing. Oliver had made
his choice. He had kept the hearts of his soldiers, and had
broken with almost every other class of his fellow-citizens.
Beyond the limits of his camps and fortresses he could scarcely
be said to have a party. Those elements of force which,
when the civil war broke out, had appeared arrayed against
each other, were combined against him ; all the Cavaliers,
the great majority of the Roundheads, the Anglican Church,
the Presbyterian Church, the Roman Catholic Church, England,
Scotland, Ireland. Yet such was his genius and resolution
that he was able to overpower and crush everything that
crossed his path, to make himself more absolute master of
his country than any of her legitimate Kings had been, and
to make his country more dreaded and respected than she
had been during many generations under the rule of her
legitimate Kings.
England had already ceased to struggle. But the two other
kingdoms which had been governed by the Stuarts were hostile
to the new republic. The Independent party was equally
odious to the Roman Catholics of Ireland, and to the Presby-
terians of Scotland. Both those countries, lately in rebellion
against Charles the First, now acknowledged the authority of
Charles the Second.
But everything yielded to the vigour and ability of Cromwell.
In a few months he subjugated Ireland, as Ireland had never
been subjugated during the five centuries of slaughter which
98 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
had elapsed since the landing of the first Norman settlers.
He resolved to put an end to that conflict of races and
religions which had so long distracted the island, by making
the English and Protestant population decidedly predominant.
For this end he gave the rein to the fierce enthusiasm of his
followers, waged war resembling that which Israel waged on
the Canaanites, smote the idolaters with the edge of the
sword, so that great cities were left without inhabitants, drove
many thousands to the Continent, shipped off many thousands
to the West Indies, and supplied the void thus made by
pouring in numerous colonists, of Saxon blood, and of Calvin-
istic faith. Strange to say, under that iron rule, the conquered
country began to wear an outward face of prosperity. Districts
which had recently been as wild as those where the first white
settlers of Connecticut were contending with the red men
were in a few years transformed into the likeness of Kent
and Norfolk. New buildings, roads, and plantations were
everywhere seen. The rent of estates rose fast ; and soon
the English landowners began to complain that they were met
in every market by the products of Ireland, and to clamour
for protecting laws.
From Ireland the victorious chief, who was now in name,
as he had long been in reality, Lord General of the armies of
the Commonwealth, turned to Scotland. The young King
was there. He had consented to profess himself a Presby-
terian, and to subscribe the Covenant ; and, in return for
these concessions, the austere Puritans who bore sway at
Edinburgh had permitted him to assume the crown, and to
hold, under their inspection and control, a solemn and
melancholy court. This mock loyalty was of short duration.
In two great battles Cromwell annihilated the military force
of Scotland. Charles fled for his life, and, with extreme
diflSculty, escaped the fate of his father. The ancient kingdom
of the Stuarts was reduced, for the first time, to profound
submission. Of that independence, so manfully defended
against the mightiest and ablest of the Plantagenets, no vestige
was left. The English Parliament made laws for Scotland.
English judges held assizes in Scotland. Even that stubborn
Church, which has held its own against so many governments,
scarce dared to utter an audible murmur.
Thus far there had been at least the semblance of harmony
between the warriors who subjugated Ireland and Scotland
and the politicians who sate at Westminster : but the alliance
which had been cemented by danger was dissolved by victory.
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION 99
The Parliament forgot that it was but the creature of the
army. The army was less disposed than ever to submit to
the dictation of the Parliament. Indeed the few members
who made up what was contemptuously called the Rump of
the House of Commons had no more claim than the military
chiefs to be esteemed the representatives of the nation. The
dispute was soon brought to a decisive issue. Cromwell filled
the House with armed men. The Speaker was pulled out of
his chair, the mace taken from the table, the room cleared,
and the door locked. The nation, which loved neither of the
contending parties, but which was forced, in its own despite,
to respect the capacity and resolution of the General, looked
on with patience, if not with complacency.
Kings, Lords, and Commons, had now in turn been van-
quished and destroyed ; and Cromwell seemed to be left the
sole heir of the powers of all three. Yet were certain limitations
still imposed on him by the very army to which he owed his
immense authority. That singular body of men was, for the
most part, composed of zealous republicans. In the act of
enslaving their country, they had deceived themselves into the
belief that they were emancipating her. The book which they
most venerated furnished them with a precedent which was
frequently in their mouths. It was true that the ignorant and
ungrateful nation murmured against its deliverers. Even so
had another chosen nation murmured against the leader who
brought it, by painful and dreary paths, from the house of
bondage to the land flowing with milk and honey. Yet had
that leader rescued his brethren in spite of themselves ; nor
had he shrunk from making terrible examples of those who
contemned the proffered freedom, and pined for the fleshpots,
the taskmasters, and the idolatries of Egypt. The object of
the warlike saints who surrounded Cromwell was the settlement
of a free and pious commonwealth. For that end they were
ready to employ, without scruple, any means, however violent
and lawless. It was not impossible, therefore, to establish by
their aid a monarchy absolute in effect : but it was probable
that their aid would be at once withdrawn from a ruler who,
even under strict constitutional restraints, should venture to
assume the regal name and dignity.
The sentiments of Cromwell were widely different. He was
not what he had been ; nor would it be just to consider the
change which his views had undergone as the effect merely of
selfish ambition. When he came up to the Long Parliament,
he brought with him from his rural retreat little knowledge of
lOO HISTORY OF ENGLAND
books, no experience of great affairs, and a temper galled by
the long tyranny of the government and of the hierarchy. He
had, during the thirteen years which followed, gone through a
political education of no common kind. He had been a chief
actor in a succession of revolutions. He had been long the
soul, and at last the head, of a party. He had commanded
armies, won battles, negotiated treaties, subdued, pacified, and
regulated kingdoms. It would have been strange indeed if
his notions had been still the same as in the days when his
mind was principally occupied by his fields and his religion,
and when the greatest events which diversified the course of
his life were a cattle fair or a prayer meeting at Huntingdon.
He saw that some schemes of innovation for which he had
once been zealous, whether good or bad in themselves, were
opposed to the general feeling of the country, and that, if he
persevered in those schemes, he had nothing before him but
constant troubles, which must be suppressed by the constant
use of the sword. He therefore wished to restore, in all essen-
tials, that ancient constitution which the majority of the people
had always loved, and for which they now pined. The course
afterwards taken by Monk was not open to Cromwell. The
memory of one terrible day separated the great regicide for
ever from the House of Stuart. What remained was that he
should mount the ancient English throne, and reign according
to the ancient English polity. If he could effect this, he might
hope that the wounds of the lacerated State would heal fast.
Great numbers of honest and quiet men would speedily rally
round him. Those Royalists whose attachment was rather to
institutions than to persons, to the kingly office than to King
Charles the First or King Charles the Second, would soon kiss
the hand of King Oliver. The peers, who now remained
sullenly at their country houses, and refused to take any part
in public affairs, would, when summoned to their House by
the writ of a King in possession, gladly resume their ancient
functions. Northumberland and Bedford, Manchester and
Pembroke, would be proud to bear the crown and the spurs,
the sceptre and the globe before the restorer of aristocracy. A
sentiment of loyalty would gradually bind the people to the new
dynasty ; and, on the decease of the founder of that dynasty,
the royal dignity might descend with general acquiescence to
his posterity.
The ablest Royalists were of opinion that these views were
correct, and that, if Cromwell had been permitted to follow his
own judgment, the exiled line would never have been restored.
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION lOI
But his plan was directly opposed to the feelings of the only
class which he dared not offend. The name of King was
hateful to the soldiers. Some of them were indeed unwilling
to see the administration in the hands of any single person.
The great majority, however, were disposed to support their
general, as elective first magistrate of a commonwealth, against
all factions which might resist his authority : but they would
not consent that he should assume the regal title, or that the
dignity, which was the just reward of his personal merit, should
be declared hereditary in his family. All that was left to him
was, to give to the new republic a constitution as like the
constitution of the old monarchy as the army would bear.
That his elevation to power might not seem to be his own
mere act, he convoked a council, composed partly of persons
on whose support he could depend, and partly of persons
whose opposition he might safely defy. This assembly, which
he called a Parliament, and which the populace nicknarned,
from one of the most conspicuous members, Barebone's Par-
liament, after exposing itself during a short time to the public
contempt, surrendered back to the General the powers which
it had received from him, and left him at liberty to frame a
plan of government.
His plan bore, from the first, a considerable resemblance to
the old English constitution ; but, in a few years, he thought
it safe to proceed further, and to restore almost every part of
the ancient system under new names and forms. The title
of King was not revived; but the kingly prerogatives were
intrusted to a Lord High Protector. The sovereign was called
not His Majesty, but His Highness. He was not crowned
and anointed in Westminster Abbey, but was solemnly en-
throned, girt with a sword of state, clad in a robe of purple,
and presented with a rich Bible, in Westminster Hall. His
office was not declared hereditary : but he was permitted to
name his successor ; and none could doubt that he would
name his son.
A House of Commons was a necessary part of the new polity.
In constituting this body, the Protector showed a wisdom and
a public spirit which were not duly appreciated by his contem-
poraries. The vices of the old representative system, though
by no means so serious as they afterwards became, had already
been remarked by farsighted men. Cromwell reformed that
system on the same principles on which Mr. Pitt, a hundred
and thirty years later, attempted to reform it, and on which it
was at length reformed in our own times. Small boroughs
I02 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
were disfranchised even more unsparingly than in 1832 ; and
the number of county members was greatly increased. Very
few unrepresented towns had yet grown into importance. Of
those towns the most considerable were Manchester, Leeds,
and Halifax. Representatives were given to all three. An
addition was made to the number of the members for the
capital. The elective franchise was placed on such a footing
that every man of substance, whether possessed of freehold
estates in land or not, had a vote for the county in which he
resided. A few Scotchmen and a few of the English colonists
settled in Ireland, were summoned to the assembly which was
to legislate, at Westminster, for every part of the British isles.
To create a House of Lords was a less easy task. Demo-
cracy does not require the support of prescription. Monarchy
has often stood without that support. But a patrician order
is the work of time. Oliver found already existing a nobility,
opulent, highly considered, and as popular with the commonalty
as any nobility has ever been. Had he, as King of England,
commanded the peers to meet him in Parliament accordmg to
the old usage of the realm, many of them would undoubtedly
have obeyed the call. This he could not do ; and it was to
no purpose that he offered to the chiefs of illustrious families
seats in his new senate. They conceived that they could not
accept a nomination to an upstart assembly without renouncing
their birthright and betraying their order. The Protector was,
therefore, under the necessity of filling his Upper House with
new men who, during the late stirring times, had made them-
selves conspicuous. This was the least happy of his
contrivances, and displeased all parties. The Levellers were
angry with him for instituting a privileged class. The multi-
tude, which felt respect and fondness for the great historical
names of the land, laughed without restraint at a House of
Lords, in which lucky draymen and shoemakers were seated,
to which few of the old nobles were invited, and from which
almost all those old nobles who were invited turned disdain-
fully away.
How Oliver's Parliaments were constituted, however, was
practically of Httle moment : for he possessed the means of
conducting the administration without their support, and in
defiance of their opposition. His wish seems to have been to
govern constitutionally, and to substitute the empire of the
laws for that of the sword. But he soon found that, hated as
he was, both by Royalists and Presbyterians, he could be safe
only by being absolute. The first House of Commons which
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION lOJ
the people elected by his command, questioned his authority,
and was dissolved without having passed a single act. His
second House of Commons, though it recognised him as
Protector, and would gladly have made him King, obstinately
refused to acknowledge his new Lords. He had no course
left but to dissolve the Parliament. " God," he exclaimed, at
parting, " be judge between you and me ! "
Yet was the energy of the Protector's administration in no-
wise relaxed by these dissensions. Those soldiers who would
not suffer him to assume the kingly title stood by him when
he ventured on acts of power, as high as any English King has
ever attempted. The government, therefore, though in form
a republic, was in truth a despotism, moderated only by the
wisdom, the sobriety, and the magnanimity of the despot.
The country was divided into military districts. Those
districts were placed under the command of Major Generals.
Every insurrectionary movement was promptly put down and
punished. The fear inspired by the power of the sword in so
strong, steady, and expert a hand, quelled the spirit both of
Cavaliers and Levellers. The loyal gentry declared that they
were still as ready as ever to risk their lives for the old
government and the old dynasty, if there were the slightest
hope of success : but to rush at the head of their serving men
and tenants on the pikes of brigades victorious in a hundred
battles and sieges, would be a frantic waste of innocent and
honourable blood. Both Royalists and Republicans, having
no hope in open resistance, began to revolve dark schemes of
assassination : but the Protector's intelligence was good : his
vigilance was unremitting; and, whenever he moved beyond
the walls of his palace, the dra\vn swords and cuirasses of his
trusty bodyguards encompassed him thick on every side.
Had he been a cruel, licentious, and rapacious prince, the
nation might have found courage in despair, and might have
made a convulsive effort to free itself from military domination.
But the grievances which the country suffered, though such
as excited serious discontent, were by no means such as impel
great masses of men to stake their lives, their fortunes, and the
welfare of their families against fearful odds. The taxation,
though heavier than it had been under the Stuarts, was not
heavy when compared with that of the neighbouring states and
with the resources of England. Property was secure. Even
the Cavalier, who refrained from giving disturbance to the
new settlement, enjoyed in peace whatever the civil troubles
had left him. The laws were violated only in cases where the
I04 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
safety of the Protector's person and government was con-
cerned. Justice was administered between man and man with
an exactness and purity not before known. Under no
English government, since the Reformation, had there been
so httle reUgious persecution. The unfortunate Roman
CathoUcs, indeed, were held to be scarcely within the pale of
Christian charity. But the clergy of the fallen Anglican
Church were suffered to celebrate their worship on condition
that they would abstain from preaching about politics. Even
the Jews, whose public worship had, ever since the thirteenth
century, been interdicted, were, in spite of the strong opposi-
tion of jealous traders and fanatical theologians, permitted to
build a synagogue in London.
The Protector's foreign policy at the same time extorted the
ungracious approbation of those who most detested him. The
Cavaliers could scarcely refrain from wishing that one who
had done so much to raise the fame of the nation had been a
legitimate King; and the Republicans were forced to own
that the tyrant suffered none but himself to wrong his country,
and that, if he had robbed her of liberty, he had at least given
her glory in exchange. After half a century during which
England had been of scarcely more weight in European
politics than Venice or Saxony, she at once became the most
formidable power in the world, dictated terms of peace to the
United Provinces, avenged the common injuries of Christen-
dom on the pirates of Barbary, vanquished the Spaniards by
land and sea, seized one of the finest Western Indian islands,
and acquired on the Flemish coast a fortress which consoled
the national pride for the loss of Calais. She was supreme
on the ocean. She was the head of the Protestant interest.
All the reformed Churches scattered over Roman Catholic
kingdoms acknowledged Cromwell as their guardian. The
Huguenots of Languedoc, the shepherds who, in the hamlets
of the Alps, professed a Protestantism older than that of
Augsburg, were secured from oppression by the mere terror
of his great name. The Pope himself was forced to preach
humanity and moderation to the Popish princes. For a voice
which seldom threatened in vain had declared that, unless
favour were shown to the people of God, the English guns
should be heard in the Castle of Saint Angelo. In truth,
there was nothing which Cromwell had, for his own sake and
that of his family, so much reason to desire as a general
religious war in Europe. In such a war he must have been
the captain of the Protestant armies. The heart of England
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION lOj"
would have been with him. His victories would have been
hailed with an unanimous enthusiasm unknown in the
country since the rout of the Armada, and would have effaced
the stain which one act, condemned by the general voice of
the nation, has left on his splendid fame. Unhappily for him
he had no opportunity of displaying his admirable military
talents, except against the inhabitants of the British isles.
While he lived his power stood firm, an object of mingled
aversion, admiration, and dread to his subjects. Few indeed
loved his government ; but those who hated it most hated it
less than they feared it. Had it been a worse government, it
might perhaps have been overthrown in spite of all its
strength. Had it been a weaker government, it would
certainly have been overthrown in spite of all its merits. But
it had moderation enough to abstain from those oppressions
which drive men mad ; and it had a force and energy which
none but men driven mad by oppression would venture to
encounter.
It has often been affirmed, but apparently with little reason,
that Oliver died at a time fortunate for his renown, and that, if
his life had been prolonged, it would probably have closed amidst
disgraces and disasters. It is certain that he was, to the last,
honoured by his soldiers, obeyed by the whole population of
the British islands, and dreaded by all foreign powers, that he
was laid among the ancient sovereigns of England with funeral
pomp such as London had never before seen, and that he was
succeeded by his son Richard as quietly as any King had ever
been succeeded by any Prince of Wales.
During five months, the administration of Richard Cromwell
went on so tranquilly and regularly that all Europe believed
him to be firmly established on the chair of state. In truth
his situation was in some respects much more advantageous
than that of his father. The young man had made no enemy.
His hands were unstained by civil blood. The Cavaliers
themselves allowed him to be an honest, goodnatured gentle-
man. The Presbyterian party, powerful both in numbers and
in wealth, had been at deadly feud with the late Protector, but
was disposed to regard the present Protector with favour.
That party had always been desirous to see the old civil polity
of the realm restored with some clearer definitions and some
stronger safeguards for public liberty, but had many reasons for
dreading the restoration of the old family. Richard was the
very man for politicians of this description. His humanity,
ingenuousness, and modesty, the mediocrity of his abilities, and
I06 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
the docility with which he submitted to the guidance of person^
wiser than himself, admirably qualified him to be the head of
a limited monarchy.
For a time it seemed highly probable that he would, under
the direction of able advisers, effect what his father had at-
tempted in vain. A Parliament was called, and the writs were
directed after the old fashion. The small boroughs which
had recently been disfranchised regained their lost privilege :
Manchester, Leeds, and Halifax ceased to return members ;
and the county of York was again limited to two knights. It may
seem strange to a generation which has been excited almost to
madness by the question of parliamentary reform that great
shires and towns should have submitted with patience, and
even with complacency, to this change : but though reflecting
men could, even in that age, discern the vices of the old
representative system, and foresee that those vices would, sooner
or later, produce serious practical evil, the practical evil had
not yet been much felt. Oliver's representative system, on the
other hand, though constructed on the soundest principles, was
not popular. Both the events in which it originated, and the
effects which it had produced, prejudiced men against it It
had sprung from military violence. It had been fruitful of
nothing but disputes. The whole nation was sick of govern-
ment by the sword, and pined for government by the law. The
restoration, therefore, even of anomalies and abuses, which
were in strict conformity with the law, and which had been
destroyed by the sword, gave general satisfaction.
Among the Commons there was a strong opposition, consist-
ing partly of avowed Republicans, and partly of concealed
Royalists : but a large and steady majority appeared to be
favourable to the plan of reviving the old civil constitution
under a new dynasty. Richard was solemnly recognised as
first magistrate. The Commons not only consented to transact
business with Oliver's Lords, but passed a vote acknowledging
the right of those nobles who had in the late troubles taken
the side of public liberty, to sit in the Upper House of Parlia-
ment without any new creation.
Thus far the statesmen by whose advice Richard acted had
been successful. Almost all the parts of the government were
now constituted as they had been constituted at the commence-
ment of the civil war. Had the Protector and the Parliament
been suffered to proceed undisturbed, there can be little doubt
that an order of things similar to that which was afterwards
established under the House of Hanover would have been
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION IO7
established under the House of Cromwell. But there was in
the State a power more than sufficient to deal with Protector
and Parliament together. Over the soldiers Richard had no
authority except that which he derived from the great name
which he had inherited. He had never led them to victory.
He had never even borne arms. All his tastes and habits were
pacific. Nor were his opinions and feelings on religious sub-
jects approved by the military saints. That he was a good
man he evinced by proofs more satisfactory than deep groans
or long sermons, by humility and suavity when he was at the
height of human greatness, and by cheerful resignation under
cruel wrongs and misfortunes : but the cant then common in
every guardroom gave him a disgust which he had not always
the prudence to conceal. The officers who had the principal
influence among the troops stationed near London were not his
friends. They were men distinguished by valour and conduct
in the field, but destitute of the wisdom and civil courage
which had been conspicuous in their deceased leader. Some
of them were honest, but fanatical, Independents and
Republicans. Of this class Fleetwood was the representative.
Others were impatient to be what Oliver had been. His rapid
elevation, his prosperity and glory, his inauguration in the Hall,
and his gorgeous obsequies in the Abbey, had inflamed their
imagination. They were as well born as he, and as well
educated : they could not understand why they were not as
worthy to wear the purple robe, and to wield the sword of
state ; and they pursued the objects of their wild ambition, not,
like him, with patience, vigilance, sagacity, and determination,
but with the restlessness and irresolution characteristic of aspir-
ing mediocrity. Among these feeble copies of a great original
the most conspicuous was Lambert.
On the very day of Richard's accession the officers began to
conspire against their new master. The good understanding
which existed between him and his Parliament hastened the
crisis. Alarm and resentment spread through the camp. Both
the religious and the professional feelings of the army were
deeply wounded. It seemed that the Independents were to be
subjected to the Presbyterians, and that the men of the sword
were to be subjected to the men of the gown. A coalition was
formed between the military malecontents and the republican
minority of the House of Commons. It may well be doubted
whether Richard could have triumphed over that coalition, even
if he had inherited his father's clear judgment and iron courage.
It is certain that simplicity and meekness like his were not the
I08 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
qualities which the conjuncture required. He fell ingloriously,
and without a struggle. He was used by the army as an
instrument for the purpose of dissolving the Parliament, and
was then contemptuously thrown aside. The officers gratified
their republican allies by declaring that the expulsion of the
Rump had been illegal, and by inviting that assembly to
resume its functions. The old Speaker and a quorum of the
old members came together and were proclaimed, amidst the
scarcely stifled derision and execration of the whole nation, the
supreme power in the State. It was at the same time expressly
declared that there should be no first magistrate, and no House
of Lords.
But this state of things could not last. On the day on
which the Long Parliament revived, revived also its old quarrel
with the army. Again the Rump forgot that it owed its
existence to the pleasure of the soldiers, and began to treat
them as subjects. Again the doors of the House of Commons
were closed by military violence ; and a provisional govern-
ment, named by the officers, assumed the direction of affairs.
Meanwhile the sense of great evils, and the strong appre-
hension of still greater evils close at hand, had at length
produced an alliance between the Cavaliers and the Presby-
terians. Some Presbyterians had, indeed, been disposed to
such an alliance even before the death of Charles the First :
but it was not till after the fall of Richard Cromwell that the
whole party became eager for the restoration of the royal
house. There was no longer any reasonable hope that the
old constitution could be reestablished under a new dynasty.
One choice only was left, the Stuarts or the army. The
banished family had committed great faults ; but it had dearly
expiated those faults, and had undergone a long, and, it might
be hoped, a salutary training in the school of adversity. It
was probable that Charles the Second would take warning by
the fate of Charles the First. But, be this as it might, the
dangers which threatened the country were such that, in order
to avert them, some opinions might well be compromised, and
some risks might well be incurred. It seemed but too likely
that England would fall under the most odious and degrading
of all kinds of government, under a government uniting all the
evils of despotism to all the evils of anarchy. Anything was
preferable to the yoke of a succession of incapable and
inglorious tyrants, raised to power, like the Deys of Barbary,
by military revolutions recurring at short intervals. Lambert
seemed likely to be the first of these rulers ; but within a year
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION IO9
Lambert might give place to Desborough, and Desborough to
Harrison. As often as the truncheon was transferred from
one feeble hand to another, the nation would be pillaged for
the purpose of bestowing a fresh donative on the troops.
If the Presbyterians obstinately stood aloof from the Royalists,
the State was lost ; and men might well doubt whether, by the
combined exertions of Presbyterians and Royalists, it could be
saved. For the dread of that invincible army was on all the
inhabitants of the island ; and the Cavaliers, taught by a
hundred disastrous fields how little numbers can effect against
discipline, were even more completely cowed than the
Roundheads.
While the soldiers remained united, all the plots and risings
of the malecontents were ineffectual. But a few days after the
second expulsion of the Rump, came tidings which gladdened
the hearts of all who were attached either to monarchy or to
liberty. That mighty force which had, during many years,
acted as one man, and which, while so acting, had been found
irresistible, was at length divided against itself. The army
of Scotland had done good service to the Commonwealth,
and was in the highest state of efficiency. It had borne
no part in the late revolutions, and had seen them with
indignation resembling the indignation which the Roman
legions posted on the Danube and the Euphrates felt, when
they learned that the empire had been put up to sale by the
Praetorian Guards. It was intolerable that certain regiments
should, merely because they happened to be quartered
near Westminster, take on themselves to make and unmake
several governments in the course of half a year. If it
were fit that the state should be regulated by the soldiers,
those soldiers who upheld the English ascendency on the
north of the Tweed were as well entitled to a voice as those
who garrisoned the Tower of London. There appears to
have been less fanaticism among the troops stationed in
Scotland than in any other part of the army ; and their
general, George Monk, was himself the very opposite of a
zealot. He had, at the commencement of the civil war, borne
arms for the King, had been made prisoner by the Round-
heads, had then accepted a commission from the Parliament,
and, with very slender pretensions to saintship, had raised
himself to high commands by his courage and professional
skill. He had been an useful servant to both the Protectors,
had quietly acquiesced when the officers at Westminster pulled
down Richard and restored the Long Parliament, and would
IIO HISTORY OF ENGLAND
perhaps have acquiesced as quietly in the second expulsion of
the Long Parliament, if the provisional government had ab-
stained from giving him cause of offence and apprehension.
For his nature was cautious and somewhat sluggish ; nor was
he at all disposed to hazard sure and moderate advantages for
the chance of obtaining even the most splendid success. He
seems to have been impelled to attack the new rulers of the
commonwealth less by the hope that, if he overthrew them,
he should become great, than by the fear that, if he submitted
to them, he should not even be secure. Whatever were his
motives, he declared himself the champion of the oppressed
civil power, refused to acknowledge the usurped authority of
the provisional government, and, at the head of seven thousand
veterans, marched into England.
This step was the signal for a general explosion. The
people everywhere refused to pay taxes. The apprentices of
the City assembled by thousands and clamoured for a free
Parliament. The fleet sailed up the Thames, and declared
against the tyranny of the soldiers. The soldiers, no longer
under the control of one commanding mind, separated into
factions. Every regiment, afraid lest it should be left alone a
mark for the vengeance of the oppressed nation, hastened
to make a separate peace. Lambert, who had hastened north-
ward to encounter the army of Scotland, was abandoned by
his troops, and became a prisoner. During thirteen years the
civil power had, in every conflict, been compelled to yield to
the military power. The military power now humbled itself
before the civil power. The Rump, generally hated and
despised, but still the only body in the country which had any
show of legal authority, returned again to the house from
which it had been twice ignominiously expelled.
In the meantime Monk was advancing towards London.
Wherever he came, the gentry flocked round him, imploring
him to use his power for the purpose of restoring peace and
liberty to the distracted nation. The General, coldblooded,
taciturn, zealous for no polity and for no religion, maintained
an impenetrable reserve. What were at this time his plans,
and whether he had any plan, may well be doubted. His
great object, apparently, was to keep himself, as long as
possible, free to choose between several lines of action.
Such, indeed, is commonly the policy of men who are, like
him, distinguished rather by wariness than by farsightedness.
It was probably not till he had been some days in the capital
that he made up his mind. The cry of the whole people was
BRITAIN DOWN TO THE RESTORATION III
Ibr a free Parliament ; and there could be no doubt that a
Parliament really free would instantly restore the exiled family.
The Rump and the soldiers were still hostile to the House of
Stuart. But the Rump was universally detested and despised.
The power of the soldiers was indeed still formidable, but had
been greatly diminished by discord. They had no head.
They had recently been, in many parts of the country, arrayed
against each other. On the very day before Monk reached
London, there was a fight in the Strand between the cavalry
and the infantry. An united army had long kept down a
divided nation : but the nation was now united, and the army
was divided.
During a short time, the dissimulation or irresolution of
Monk kept all parties in a state of painful suspense. At length
he broke silence, and declared for a free Parliament.
As soon as his declaration was known, the whole nation was
wild with delight. Wherever he appeared thousands thronged
round him, shouting and blessing his name. The bells of all
England rang joyously : the gutters ran with ale : and, night
after night, the sky five miles round London was reddened by
innumerable bonfires. Those Presbyterian members of the
House of Commons who had many years before been expelled
by the army, returned to their seats, and were hailed with
acclamations by great multitudes, which filled Westminster Hall
and Palace Yard. The Independent leaders no longer dared
to show their faces in the streets, and were scarcely safe within
their own dwellings. Temporary provision was made for the
government : writs were issued for a general election ; and
then that memorable Parliament, which had, during twenty
eventful years, experienced every variety of fortune, which had
triumphed over its sovereign, which had been enslaved and
degraded by its servants, which had been twice ejected and
twice restored, solemnly decreed its own dissolution.
The result of the elections was such as might have been
expected from the temper of the nation. The new House of
Commons consisted, with few exceptions, of persons friendly
to the royal family. The Presbyterians formed the majority.
That there would be a restoration now seemed almost
certain ; but whether there would be a peaceable restoration was
matter of painful doubt. The soldiers were in a gloomy and
savage mood. They hated the title of King. They
hated the name of Stuart. They hated Presbyterianism
much, and Prelacy more. They saw with bitter indignation
that the close of their long domination was approaching,
I 12 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
and that a life of inglorious toil and penury was before
them. They attributed their ill fortune to the weakness
of some generals, and to the treason of others. One hour
of their beloved Oliver might even now restore the glory
which had departed. Betrayed, disunited, and left without
any chief in whom they could confide, they were yet to be
dreaded. It was no light thing to encounter the rage and
despair of fifty thousand fighting men, whose backs no enemy
had ever seen. Monk, and those with whom he acted, were
well aware that the crisis was most perilous. They employed
every art to soothe and to divide the discontented warriors. At
the same time vigorous preparation was made for a conflict.
The army of Scotland, now quartered in London, was kept
in good humour by bribes, praises, and promises. The
wealthy citizens grudged nothing to a red coat, and were indeed
so liberal of their best wine, that warlike saints were sometimes
seen in a condition not very honourable either to their religious
or to their military character. Some refractory regiments
Monk ventured to disband. In the meantime the greatest
exertions were made by the provisional government, with the
strenuous aid of the whole body of the gentry and magistracy,
to organize the militia. In every county the trainbands were
held ready to march ; and this force cannot be estimated at
less than a hundred and twenty thousand men. In Hyde Park
twenty thousand citizens, well armed and accoutred, passed in
review, and showed a spirit which justified the hope that, in
case of need, they would fight manfully for their shops and
firesides. The fleet was heartily with the nation. It was a
stirring time, a time of anxiety, yet of hope. The prevailing
opinion was that England would be delivered, but not without
a desperate and bloody struggle, and that the class which had
so long ruled by the sword would perish by the sword.
Happily the dangers of a conflict were averted. There was
indeed one moment of extreme peril. Lambert escaped from
his confinement, and called his comrades to arms. The flame
of civil war was actually rekindled ; but by prompt and vigorous
exertion it was trodden out before it had time to spread. The
luckless imitator of Cromwell was again a prisoner. The failure
of his enterprise damped the spirit of the soldiers ; and they
sullenly resigned themselves to their fate.
The new Parliament, which, having been called without the
royal writ, is more accurately described as a Convention, met
at Westminster. The Lords repaired to the hall, from which
they had, during more than eleven years, been excluded
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND II3
by force. Both Houses instantly invited the King to return to
his country. He was proclaimed with pomp never before
known. A gallant fleet convoyed him from Holland to the
coast of Kent. When he landed, the cUffs of Dover were
covered by thousands of gazers, among whom scarcely one
could be found who was not weeping with delight. The
journey to London was a continued triumph. The whole road
from Rochester was bordered by booths and tents, and looked
like an interminable fair. Everywhere flags were flying, bells
and music sounding, wine and ale flowing in rivers to the
health of him whose return was the return of peace, of law,
and of freedom. But in the midst of the general joy, one spot
presented a dark and threatening aspect. On Blackheath the
army was drawn up to welcome the sovereign. He smiled,
bowed, and extended his hand graciously to the Hps of the
colonels and majors. But all his courtesy was vain. The
countenances of the soldiers were sad and lowering ; and, had
they given way to their feelings, the festive pageant of which
they reluctantly made a part would have had a mournful and
bloody end. But there was no concert among them. Discord
and defection had left them no confidence in their chiefs or in
each other. The whole array of the City of London was
under arms. Numerous companies of militia had assembled
from various parts of the realm, under the command of loyal
noblemen and gentlemen, to welcome the King. That great
day closed in peace ; and the restored wanderer reposed safe
in the palace of his ancestors.
CHAPTER II
The history of England, during the seventeenth century, is the
history of the transformation of a limited monarchy, constituted
after the fashion of the middle ages, into a limited monarchy
suited to that more advanced state of society in which the
public charges can no longer be borne by the estates of the
crown, and in which the public defence can no longer be
entrusted to a feudal militia. We have seen that the politicians
who were at the head of the Long Parliament made, in 1642,
a great effort to accomplish this change by transferring, directly
and formally, to the Estates of the realm the choice of ministers,
114 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
the command of the army, and the superintendence of the
whole executive administration. This scheme was, perhaps,
the best that could then be contrived : but it was completely
disconcerted by the course which the civil war took. The
Houses triumphed, it is true ; but not till after such a struggle
as made it necessary for them to call into existence a power
which they could not control, and which soon began to domineer
over all orders and all parties. For a time, the evils inseparable
from military government were, in some degree, mitigated by the
wisdom and magnanimity of the great man who held the
supreme command. But, when the sword which he had
wielded, with energy indeed, but with energy always guided by
good sense and generally tempered by good nature, had passed
to captains who possessed neither his abilities nor his virtues, it
seemed too probable that order and liberty would perish in one
ignominious ruin.
That ruin was happily averted. It has been too much the
practice of writers zealous for freedom to represent the
Restoration as a disastrous event, and to condemn the folly or
baseness of that Convention which recalled the royal family
without exacting new securities against maladministration.
Those who hold this language do not comprehend the real
nature of the crisis which followed the deposition of Richard
Cromwell. England was in imminent danger of sinking under
the tyranny of a succession of small men raised up and pulled
down by military caprice. To deliver the country from the
domination of the soldiers was the first object of every
enlightened patriot : but it was an object which, while the
soldiers were united, the most sanguine could scarcely expect
to attain. On a sudden a gleam of hope appeared. General
was opposed to general, army to army. On the use which
might be made of one auspicious moment depended the future
destiny of the nation. Our ancestors used that moment well.
They forgot old injuries, waved petty scruples, adjourned to a
more convenient season all dispute about the reforms which
our institutions needed, and stood together, Cavaliers and
Roundheads, Episcopalians and Presbyterians, in firm union,
for the old laws of the land against military despotism. The
exact partition of power among King, Lords, and Commons,
might well be postponed till it had been decided whether
England should be governed by King, Lords, and Commons,
or by cuirassiers and pikemen. Had the statesmen of the
Convention taken a different course, had they held long debates
on the principles of government, had they drawn up a new
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND II5
constitution and sent it to Charles, had conferences been
opened, had couriers been passing and repassing during some
weeks between Westminster and the Netherlands, with projects
and counterprojects, replies by Hyde and rejoinders by Prynne,
the coalition on which the public safety depended would have
been dissolved : the Presbyterians and Royalists would cer-
tainly have quarrelled : the military factions might possibly
have been reconciled : and the misjudging friends of liberty
might long have regretted, under a rule worse than that of the
worst Stuart, the golden opportunity which had been suffered
to escape.
The old civil polity was, therefore, by the general consent of
both the great parties, re-established. It was again exactly
what it had been when Charles the First, eighteen years before,
withdrew from his capital. All those acts of the Long
Parliament which had received the royal assent were admitted
to be still in full force. One fresh concession, a concession in
which the Cavaliers were even more deeply interested than the
Roundheads, was easily obtained from the restored King. The
military tenure of land had been originally created as a means
of national defence. But in the course of ages whatever was
useful in the institution had disappeared ; and nothing was left
but ceremonies and grievances. A landed proprietor who held
an estate under the crown by knight service, — and it was thus
that most of the soil of England was held, — had to pay a large
fine on coming to his property. He could not alienate one
acre without purchasing a license. When he died, if his
domains descended to an infant, the sovereign was guardian,
and was not only entitled to great part of the rents during the
minority, but could require the ward, under heavy penalties, to
marry any person of suitable rank. The chief bait which
attracted a needy sycophant to the court was the hope of
obtaining as the reward of servility and flattery, a royal letter
to an heiress. These abuses had perished with the monarchy.
That they should not revive with it was the wish of every
landed gentleman in the kingdom. They were, therefore,
solemnly abolished by statute ; and no relic of the ancient
tenures in chivalry was suffered to remain, except those
honorary services which are still, at a coronation, rendered to
the person of the sovereign by some lords of manors.
The troops were now to be disbanded. Fifty thousand men,
accustomed to the profession of arms, were at once thrown on
the world : and experience seemed to warrant the belief that
this change would produce much misery and crime, that the
Il6 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
discharged veterans would be seen begging in every street, or
that they would be driven by hunger to pillage. But no such
result followed. In a few months there remained not a trace
indicating that the most formidable army in the world had just
been absorbed into the mass of the community. The Royalists
themselves confessed that, in every department of honest
industry, the discarded warriors prospered beyond other men,
that none was charged with any theft or robbery, that none
was heard to ask an alms, and that, if a baker, a mason, or
a waggoner attracted notice by his diligence and sobriety, he
was in all probability one of Oliver's old soldiers.
The military tyranny had passed away ; but it had left deep
and enduring traces in the public mind. The name of a
standing army was long held in abhorrence : and it is remark-
able that this feeUng was even stronger among the Cavaliers
than among the Roundheads. It ought to be considered as a
most fortunate circumstance that, when our country was, for
the first and last time, ruled by the sword, the sword was in the
hands, not of her legitimate princes, but of those rebels who
slew the King and demolished the Church. Had a prince,
with a title as good as that of Charles, commanded an
army as good as that of Cromwell, there would have
been little hope indeed for the liberties of England.
Happily that instrument by which alone the monarchy could
be made absolute became an object of peculiar horror and
disgust to the monarchical party, and long continued to be
inseparably associated in the imagination of Royalists and
Prelatists with regicide and field preaching. A century after
the death of Cromwell, the Tories still continued to clamour
against every augmentation of the regular soldiery, and to
sound the praise of a national militia. So late as the year
1786, a minister who enjoyed no common measure of their
confidence found it impossible to overcome their aversion to
his scheme of fortifying the coast : nor did they ever look with
entire complacency on the standing army, till the French
Revolution gave a new direction to their apprehensions.
The coalition which had restored the King terminated with
the danger from which it had sprung; and two hostile parties
again appeared ready for conflict. Both indeed were agreed as
to the propriety of inflicting punishment on some unhappy men
who were, at that moment, objects of almost universal hatred.
Cromwell was no more ; and those who had fled before him
were forced to content themselves with the miserable satis-
faction of digging up, hanging, quartering, and burning the
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND II7
remains of the greatest prince that has ever ruled England.
Other objects of vengeance, few indeed, yet too many, were
found among the republican chiefs. Soon, however, the
conquerors, glutted with the blood of the regicides, turned
against each other. The Roundheads, while admitting the
virtues of the late King, and while condemning the sentence
passed upon him by an illegal tribunal, yet maintained that his
administration had been, in many things, unconstitutional, and
that the Houses had taken arms against him from good motives
and on strong grounds. The monarchy, these politicians con-
ceived, had no worse enemy than the flatterer who exalted the
prerogative above the law, who condemned all opposition to
regal encroachments, and who reviled, not only Cromwell and
Harrison, but Pym and Hampden, as traitors. If the King
wished for a quiet and prosperous reign, he must confide in
those who, though they had drawn the sword in defence of the
invaded privileges of Parliament, had yet exposed themselves
to the rage of the soldiers in order to save his father, and had
taken the chief part in bringing back the royal family.
The feeling of the Cavaliers was widely different. During
eighteen years they had, through all vicissitudes, been faithful
to the crown. Having shared the distress of their prince, were
they not to share his triumph ? Was no distinction to be made
between them and the disloyal subject who had fought against
his rightful sovereign, who had adhered to Richard Cromwell,
and who had never concurred in the restoration of the Stuarts,
till it appeared that nothing else could save the nation from the
tyranny of the army? Grant that such a man had, by his
recent services, fairly earned his pardon. Yet were his services,
rendered at the eleventh hour, to be put in comparison wdth
the toils and sufferings of those who had borne the burden and
heat of the day ? Was he to be ranked with men who had no
need of the royal clemency, with men who had, in every part
of their lives, merited the royal gratitude. Above all, was he
to be suffered to retain a fortune raised out of the substance of
the ruined defenders of the throne ? Was it not enough that
his head and his patrimonial estate, a hundred times forfeited
to justice, were secure, and that he shared, with the rest of the
nation, in the blessings of that mild government of which he
had long been the foe ? Was it necessary that he should be
rewarded for his treason at the expense of men whose only
crime was the fidelity with which they had observed their oath
of allegiance ? And what interest had the King in gorging his
old enemies with prey torn from his old friends? What con-
I I 8 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
fidence could be placed in men who had opposed their
sovereign, made war on him, imprisoned him, and who, even
now, instead of hanging down their heads in shame and con-
trition, vindicated all that they had done, and seemed to think
that they had given an illustrious proof of loyalty by just
stopping short of regicide ? It was true that they had lately
assisted to set up the throne : but it was not less true that they
had previously pulled it down, and that they still avowed
principles which might impel them to pull it down again.
Undoubtedly it might be fit that marks of royal approbation
should be bestowed on some converts who had been eminently
useful : but policy, as well as justice and gratitude, enjoined
the King to give the highest place in his regard to those who,
from first to last, through good and evil, had stood by his
house. On these grounds the Cavaliers very naturally
demanded indemnity for all that they had suffered, and pre-
ference in the distribution of the favours of the crown. Some
violent members of the party went further, and clamoured for
large categories of proscription.
The political feud was, as usual, exasperated by a religious
feud. The King found the Church in a singular state. A short
time before the commencement of the civil war, his father had
given a reluctant assent to a bill, strongly supported by Falkland,
which deprived the Bishops of their seats in the House of
Lords : but Episcopacy and the Liturgy had never been
abolished by law. The Long Parliament, however, had passed
ordinances which had made a complete revolution in Church
government and in public worship. The new system was, in
principle, scarcely less Erastian than that which it displaced.
The Houses, guided chiefly by the counsels of the accom-
plished Selden, had determined to keep the spiritual power
strictly subordinate to the temporal power. They had refused
to declare that any form of ecclesiastical polity was of divine
origin ; and they had provided that, from all the Church courts,
an appeal should lie in the last resort to Parliament. With
this higlily important reservation it had been resolved to set
up in England a hierarchy closely resembling that which now
exists in Scotland. The authority of councils, rising one
above another in regular gradation, was substituted for the
authority of Bishops and Archbishops. The Liturgy gave
place to the Presbyterian directory. But scarcely had the new
regulations been framed, when the Independents rose to
supreme influence in the state. The Independents had no
disposition to enforce the ordinances touching classical, pro-
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND II9
vincial, and national synods. Those ordinances, therefore,
were never carried into full execution. The Presbyterian
system was fully established nowhere but in Middlesex and
Lancashire. In the other fifty counties, almost every parish
seems to have been unconnected with the neighbouring
parishes. In some districts, indeed, the ministers formed them-
selves into voluntary associations, for the purpose of mutual
help and counsel ; but these associations had no coercive power.
The patrons of livings, being now checked by neither Bishop
nor Presbytery, would have been at liberty to confide the cure
of souls to the most scandalous of mankind, but for the arbi-
trary intervention of Oliver. He established, by his own
authority, a board of commissioners, called Triers. Most of
these persons were Independent divines ; but a few Presby-
terian ministers and a few laymen had seats. The certificate
of the Triers stood in the place both of institution and of
induction ; and without such a certificate no person could
hold a benefice. This was undoubtedly one of the most
despotic acts ever done by any English ruler. Yet, as it was
generally felt that, without some such precaution, the country
would be overrun by ignorant and drunken reprobates, bearing
the name and receiving the pay of ministers, some highly
respectable persons, who were not in general friendly to
Cromwell, allowed that, on this occasion, he had been a public
benefactor. The presentees whom the Triers had approved
took possession of the rectories, cultivated the glebe lands,
collected the tithes, prayed without book or surplice, and
administered the Eucharist to communicants seated at long
tables.
Thus the ecclesiastical polity of the realm was in inextricable
confusion. Episcopacy was the form of government prescribed
by the old law which was still unrepealed. The form of
government prescribed by parliamentary ordinance was Pres-
byterian. But neither the old law nor the parliamentary
ordinance was practically in force. The Church actually
established may be described as an irregular body made up
of a few Presbyteries, and of many Independent congregations,
which were all held down and held together by the authority
of the government.
Of those who had been active in bringing back the King,
many were zealous for synods and for the directory, and many
were desirous to terminate by a compromise the religious
dissensions which had long agitated England. Between the
bigoted followers of Laud and the bigoted followers of Calvin
E34
I20 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
there could be neither peace nor truce : but it did not seem
impossible to effect an accommodation between the moderate
Episcopalians of the school of Usher and the moderate Pres-
byterians of the school of Baxter. The moderate Episcopalians
would admit that a Bishop might lawfully be assisted by a
council. The moderate Presbyterians would not deny that
each provincial assembly might lawfully have a permanent
president, and that this president might lawfully be called a
Bishop. There might be a revised Liturgy which should not
exclude extemporaneous prayer, a baptismal service in which
the sign of the cross might be used or omitted at discretion, a
communion service at which the faithful might sit if their
consciences forbade them to kneel. But to no such plan could
the great body of the Cavaliers listen with patience. The
religious members of that party were conscientiously attached
to the whole system of their Church. She had been dear to
their murdered King. She had consoled them in defeat and
penury. Her service, so often whispered in an inner chamber
during the season of trial, had such a charm for them that they
were unwilling to part with a single response. Other Royalists,
who made little pretence to piety, yet loved the episcopal
Church because she was the foe of their foes. They valued a
prayer or a ceremony, not on account of the comfort which it
convey ed to themselves, but on account of the vexation which
it gave to the Roundheads, and were so far from being disposed
to purchase union by concession that they objected to conces-
sion chiefly because it tended to produce union.
Such feelings, though blamable, were natural and not wholly
inexcusable. The Puritans in the day of their power had
undoubtedly given cruel provocation. They ought to have
learned, if from nothing else, yet from their own discontents,
from their own struggles, from their own victory, from the fall
of that proud hierarchy by which they had been so heavily
oppressed, that, in England, and in the seventeenth century, it
was not in the power of the civil magistrate to drill the minds
of men into conformity with his own system of theology. They
proved, however, as intolerant and as meddling as ever Laud
had been. They interdicted under heavy penalties the use of
the Book of Common Prayer, not only in churches, but even
in private houses. It was a crime in a child to read by the
bedside of a sick parent one of those beautiful collects which
had soothed the griefs of forty generations of Christians.
Severe punishments were denounced against such as should
presume to blame the Calvinistic mode of worship. Clergymen
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 12 1
of respectable character were not only ejected from their
benefices, by thousands, but were frequently exposed to the
outrages of a fanatical rabble. Churches and sepulchres, fine
works of art and curious remains of antiquity, were brutally
defaced. The Parliament resolved that all pictures in the royal
collection which contained representations of Jesus or of the
Virgin Mother should be burned. Sculpture fared as ill as
painting. Nymphs and Graces, the work of Ionian chisels,
were delivered over to Puritan stonemasons to be made decent.
Against the lighter vices the ruling faction waged war with a
zeal little tempered by humanity or by common sense. Sharp
laws were passed against betting. It was enacted that adultery
should be punished with death. The illicit intercourse of the
sexes, even where neither violence nor seduction was imputed,
where no public scandal was given, where no conjugal right was
violated, was made a misdemeanour. Public amusements,
from the masques which were exhibited at the mansions of the
great down to the wrestling matches and grinning matches
on village greens, were vigorously attacked. One ordinance
directed that all the Maypoles in England should forthwith
be hewn down. Another proscribed all theatrical diversions.
The playhouses were to be dismantled, the spectators fined, the
actors whipped at the cart's tail. Ropedancing, puppetshows,
bowls, horseracing, were regarded with no friendly eye. But
bearbaiting, then a favourite diversion of high and low, was the
abomination which most strongly stirred the wrath of the
austere sectaries. It is to be remarked that their antipathy to
this sport had nothing in common with the feeling which has,
in our own time, induced the legislature to interfere for the
purpose of protecting beasts against the wanton cruelty of men.
The Puritan hated bearbaiting, not because it gave pain to the
bear, but because it gave pleasure to the spectators. Indeed,
he generally contrived to enjoy the double pleasure of torment-
ing both spectators and bear.*
* How little compassion for the bear had to do with the matter is
sufficiently proved by the following extract from a paper entitled A perfect
Diurnal of some Passages of Parliament, and from other Parts of the King-
dom, from Monday July 24th, to Monday July 31st, 1643. "Upon the
queen's coming from Holland, she brought with her, besides a company of
savagelike ruffians, a company of savage bears, to what purpose you may
judge by the sequel. Those bears were left about Newark, and were
brought into country towns constantly on the Lord's day to be baited, such
is the religion those here related would settle amongst us ; and, if any went
about to hinder or but speak against their damnable profanations, they were
presently noted as Roundheads and Puritans, and sure to be plundered for
122 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Perhaps no single circumstance more strongly illustrates
the temper of the precisians than their conduct respecting
Christmas day. Christmas had been, from time immemorial,
the season of Joy and domestic affection, the season when
families assembled, when children came home from school,
when quarrels were made up, when carols were heard in every
street, when every house was decorated with evergreens, and
every table was loaded with good cheer. At that season all
hearts not utterly destitute of kindness were enlarged and
softened. At that season the poor were admitted to partake
largely of the overflowings of the wealth of the rich, whose
bounty was peculiarly acceptable on account of the shortness
of the days and of the severity of the weather. At that
season the interval between landlord and tenant, master and
servant, was less marked than through the rest of the year.
Where there is much enjoyment there will be some excess :
yet, on the whole, the spirit in which the holiday was kept was
not unworthy of a Christian festival. The Long Parliament
gave orders, in 1644, that the twenty-fifth of December should
be strictly observed as a fast, and that all men should pass it
in humbly bemoaning the great national sin which they and
their fathers had so often committed on that day by romping
under the mistletoe, eating boar's head, and drinking ale
flavoured with roasted apples. No public act of that time
seems to have irritated the common people more. On the
next anniversary of the festival formidable riots broke out in
many places. The constables were resisted, the magistrates
insulted, the houses of noted zealots attacked, and the pro-
scribed service of the day openly read in the churches.
Such was the spirit of the extreme Puritans, both Presby-
terian and Independent. Oliver, indeed, was little disposed
to be either a persecutor or a meddler. But Oliver, the head
of a party, and consequently, to a great extent, the slave of
a party, could not govern altogether according to his own
it. But some of Colonel Cromwell's forces coming by accident into
Uppingham town, in Rutland, on the Lord's day, found these bears playing
there in the usual manner, and, in the height of their sport, caused them to
be seized upon, tied to a tree and shot." This was by no means a solitary
instance. Colonel Pride, when Sheriff of Surrey, ordered the beasts in the
bear garden of Southwark to be killed. He is represented by a loyal satirist
as defending the act thus : — " The first thing that is upon my spirits is the
killing of the bears, for which the people hate me, and call me all the names
in the rainbow. But did not David kill a bear ? Did not the Lord Deputy
Ireton kill a bear? Did not another lord of ours kill five bears ? " — Last
Speech and dying Words of Thomas Pride.
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 1 23
inclinations. Even under his administration many magistrates,
within their own jurisdiction, made themselves as odious as
Sir Hudibras, interfered with all the pleasures of the neigh-
bourhood, dispersed festive meetings, and put fiddlers in the
stocks. Still more formidable was the zeal of the soldiers. In
every village where they appeared there was an end of dancing,
bellringing, and hockey. In London they several times
interrupted theatrical performances at which the Protector had
the judgment and good nature to connive.
With the fear and hatred inspired by such a tyranny
contempt was largely mingled. The peculiarities of the
Puritan, his look, his dress, his dialect, his strange scruples,
had been, ever since the time of Elizabeth, favourite subjects
with mockers. But these peculiarities appeared far more
grotesque in a faction which ruled a great empire than in
obscure and persecuted congregations. The cant which had
moved laughter when it was heard on the stage from Tribula-
tion Wholesome, and Zeal of-the- Land Busy, was still more
laughable when it proceeded from the lips of Generals and
Councillors of state. It is also to be noted that during the
civil troubles several sects had sprung into existence, whose
eccentricities surpassed anything that had before been seen
in England. A mad tailor, named Lodowick Muggleton,
wandered from pothouse to pothouse, tippUng ale, and
denouncing eternal torments against those who refused to
believe, on his testimony, that the Supreme Being was only
six feet high, and that the sun was just four miles from the
earth.* George Fox had raised a tempest of derision by
proclaiming that it was a violation of Christian sincerity to
designate a single person by a plural pronoun, and that it was
an idolatrous homage to Janus and Woden to talk about
January and Wednesday. His doctrine, a few years later, was
embraced by some eminent men, and rose greatly in the
public estimation. But at the time of the Restoration the
Quakers were popularly regarded as the most despicable of
fanatics. By the Puritans they were treated with severity
here, and were persecuted to the death in New England.
Nevertheless the public, which seldom makes nice distinctions,
often confounded the Puritan with the Quaker. Both were
schismatics. Both hated episcopacy and the Liturgy. Both
had what seemed extravagant whimsies about dress, diversions,
and postures. Widely as the two differed in opinion, they
* See Penn's New Witnesses proved Old Heretics, and Muggleton's
works, passim.
124 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
were popularly classed together as canting schismatics ; and
whatever was ridiculous or odious in either increased the
scorn and aversion which the multitude felt for both.
Before the civil wars, even those who most disliked the
opinions and manners of the Puritan were forced to admit
that his moral conduct was generally, in essentials, blameless ;
but this praise was now no longer bestowed, and, unfortunately,
was no longer deserved. The general fate of sects is to
obtain a high reputation for sanctity while they are oppressed,
and to lose it as soon as they become powerful : and the
reason is obvious. It is seldom that a man inrolls himself in
a proscribed body from any but conscientious motives. Such
a body, therefore, is composed, with scarcely an exception, of
sincere persons. The most rigid discipline that can be
enforced within a religious society is a very feeble instrument
of purification, when compared with a little sharp persecution
from without. We may be certain that very few persons, not
seriously impressed by religious convictions, applied for baptism
while Diocletian was vexing the Church, or joined themselves
to Protestant congregations at the risk of being burned by
Bonner. But, when a sect becomes powerful, when its favour
is the road to riches and dignities, worldly and ambitious
men crowd into it, talk its language, conform strictly to its
ritual, mimic its peculiarities, and frequently go beyond its
honest members in all the outward indications of zeal. No
discernment, no watchfulness, on the part of ecclesiastical
rulers, can prevent the intrusion of such false brethren. The
tares and the wheat must grow together. Soon the world
begins to find out that the godly are not better than other
men, and argues, with some justice, that, if not better, they
must be much worse. In no long time all those signs which
were formerly regarded as characteristic of a saint are regarded
as characteristic of a knave.
Thus it was with the English Nonconformists. They had
been oppressed ; and oppression had kept them a pure body.
They then became supreme in the state. No man could hope
to rise to eminence and command but by their favour. Their
favour was to be gained only by exchanging with them the
signs and passwords of spiritual fraternity. One of the first
resolutions adopted by Barebone's Parliament, the most
intensely Puritanical of all our political assemblies, was that
no person should be admitted into the public service till the
House should be satisfied of his real godliness. What were then
considered as the signs of real godliness, the sad coloured
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND I25
dress, the sour look, the straight hair, the nasal whine, the
speech interspersed with quaint texts, the abhorrence of
comedies, cards, and hawking, were easily counterfeited by
men to whom all religions were the same. The sincere
Puritans soon found themselves lost in a multitude, not merely
of men of the world, but of the very worst sort of men of the
world. For the most notorious libertine who had fought
under the royal standard might justly be thought virtuous
when compared with some of those who, while they talked
about sweet experiences and comfortable scriptures, lived in
the constant practice of fraud, rapacity, and secret debauchery.
The people, with a rashness which we may justly regret, but
at which we cannot wonder, formed their estimate of the whole
body from these hypocrites. The theology, the manners, the
dialect of the Puritan were thus associated in the public mind
with the darkest and meanest vices. As soon as the Restora-
tion had made it safe to avow enmity to the party which had
so long been predominant in the state, a general outcry
against Puritanism rose from every corner of the kingdom, and
was often swollen by the voices of those very dissemblers
whose villany had brought disgrace on the Puritan name.
Thus the two great parties, which, after a long contest, had
for a moment concurred in restoring monarchy, were, both in
politics and in religion, again opposed to each other. The
great body of the nation leaned to the Royalists. The crimes
of Strafford and Laud, the excesses of the Star Chamber and
of the High Commission, the great services which the Long
Parliament had, during the first year of its existence, rendered
to the state, had faded from the minds of men. The execution
of Charles the First, the sullen tyranny of the Rump, the
violence of the army, were remembered with loathing ; and the
multitude was inclined to hold all who had withstood the late
King responsible for his death and for the subsequent disasters.
The House of Commons, having been elected while the
Presbyterians were dominant, by no means represented the
general sense of the people, and, while execrating Cromwell
and Bradshaw, reverenced the memory of Essex and of Pym.
One member who ventured to declare that all who had drawn
the sword against Charles the First were as much traitors as
those who cut ofi his head, was called to order, placed at the
bar, and reprimanded by the Speaker. The general wish of the
House undoubtedly was to settle the ecclesiastical disputes in a
manner satisfactory to the moderate Puritans. But to such a
settlement both the court and the nation were averse.
126 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
The restored King was at this time more loved by the people
than any of his predecessors had ever been. The calamities of
his house, the heroic death of his father, his own long suffer-
ings and romantic adventures, made him an object of tender
interest. His return had delivered the country from an
intolerable bondage. Recalled by the voice of both the
contending factions, he was in a position which enabled him to
arbitrate between them ; and in some respects he was well
qualified for the task. He had received from nature excellent
parts and a happy temper. His education had been such as
might have been expected to develope his understanding, and
to form him to the practice of every public and private virtue.
He had passed through all varieties of fortune, and had seen
both sides of human nature. He had, while very young, been
driven forth from a palace to a Hfe of exile, penury, and danger.
He had, at the age when the mind and body are in their
highest perfection, and when the first effervescence of boyish
passions should have subsided, been recalled from his wander-
ings to wear a crown. He had been taught by bitter experience
how much baseness, perfidy, and ingratitude may lie hid under
the obsequious demeanour of courtiers. He had found, on
the other hand, in the huts of the poorest, true nobility of soul.
When wealth was offered to any who would betray him, when
death was denounced against all who should shelter him,
cottagers and serving men had kept his secret truly, and had
kissed his hand under his mean disguises with as much
reverence as if he had been seated on his ancestral throne.
From such a school it might have been expected that a young
man who wanted neither abilities nor amiable qualities would
have come forth a great and good King. Charles came forth
from that school with social habits, Avith polite and engaging
manners, and with some talent for lively conversation, addicted
beyond measure to sensual indulgence, fond of sauntering and
of frivolous amusements, incapable of selfdenial and of exertion,
without faith in human virtue or in human attachment, without
desire of renown, and without sensibiUty to reproach. Accord-
ing to him, every person was to be bought : but some people
haggled more about their price than others ; and when this
haggling was very obstinate and very skilful it was called by
some fine name. The chief trick by which clever men kept up
the price of their abilities was called integrity. The chief trick
by which handsome women kept up the price of their beauty
was called modesty. The love of God, the love of country,
the love of family, the love of friends, were phrases of the same
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 1 27
sort, delicate and convenient synonymes for the love of self.
Thinking thus of mankind, Charles naturally cared very little
what they thought of him. Honour and shame were scarcely
more to him than light and darkness to the blind. His
contempt of flattery has been highly commended, but seems,
when viewed in connection with the rest of his character, to
deserve no commendation. It is possible to be below flattery
as well as above it. One who trusts nobody will not trust
sycophants. One who does not value real glory will not value
its counterfeit.
It is creditable to Charles's temper that, ill as be thought of
his species, he never became a misanthrope. He saw little in
men but what was hateful. Yet he did not hate them. Nay,
he was so far humane that it was highly disagreeable to him to
see their sufferings or to hear their complaints. This however
is a sort of humanity which, though amiable and laudable in a
private man whose power to help or hurt is bounded by a
narrow circle, has in princes often been rather a vice than
a virtue. More than one well disposed ruler has given up
whole provinces to rapine and oppression, merely from a wish
to see none but happy faces round his own board and in his
own walks. No man is fit to govern great societies who hesitates
about disobliging the few who have access to him for the sake
of the many whom he will never see. The facility of Charles
was such as has perhaps never been found in any man of equal
sense. He was a slave without being a dupe. Worthless men
and women to the very bottom of whose hearts he saw, and
whom he knew to be destitute of affection for him and un-
deserving of his confidence, could easily wheedle him out of
titles, places, domains, state secrets and pardons. He bestowed
much ; yet he neither enjoyed the pleasure nor acquired the
fame of beneficence. He never gave spontaneously ; but it was
painful to him to refuse. The consequence was that his bounty
generally went, not to those who deserved it best, nor even to
those whom he liked best, but to the most shameless and
importunate suitor who could obtain an audience.
The motives which governed the political conduct of Charles
the Second differed widely from those by which his predecessor
and his successor were actuated. He was not a man to be
imposed upon by the patriarchal theory of government and the
doctrine of divine right. He was utterly mthout ambition.
He detested business, and would sooner have abdicated his
crown than have undergone the trouble of really directing the
administration. Such was his aversion to toil, and such his
*E34
128 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
ignorance of affairs, that the very clerks who attended him
when he sate in council could not refrain from sneering at his
frivolous remarks, and at his childish impatience. Neither
gratitude nor revenge had any share in determining his course ;
for never was there a mind on which both services and injuries
left such faint and transitory impressions. He wished merely
to be a King such as Lewis the Fifteenth of France afterwards
was ; a King who could draw without limit on the treasury for
the gratification of his private tastes, who could hire with wealth
and honours persons capable of assisting him to kill the time,
and who, even when the state was brought by maladministration
to the depths of humiliation and to the brink of ruin, could
still exclude unwelcome truth from the purlieus of his own
seraglio, and refuse to see and hear whatever might disturb his
luxurious repose. For these ends, and for these ends alone,
he wished to obtain arbitrary power, if it could be obtained
without risk or trouble. In the religious disputes which divided
his Protestant subjects his conscience was not at all interested.
For his opinions oscillated in a state of contented suspense
between infidelity and Popery. But, though his conscience
was neutral in the quarrel between the Episcopalians and the
Presbyterians, his taste was by no means so. His favourite
vices were precisely those to which the Puritans were least
indulgent. He could not get through one day without the
help of diversions which the Puritans regarded as sinful. As
a man eminently well bred, and keenly sensible of the
ridiculous, he was moved to contemptuous mirth by the Puritan
oddities. He had indeed some reason to dislike the rigid sect.
He had, at the age when the passions are most impetuous and
when levity is most pardonable, spent some months in Scotland,
a King in name, but in fact a state prisoner in the hands of
austere Presbyterians. Not content with requiring him to
conform to their worship and to subscribe their Covenant,
they had watched all his motions, and lectured him on all his
youthful follies. He had been compelled to give reluctant
attendance at endless prayers and sermons, and might think
himself fortunate when he was not insolently reminded from
the pulpit of his own frailties, of his father's tyranny, and of his
mother's idolatry. Indeed he had been so miserable during
this part of his life that the defeat which made him again a
wanderer might be regarded as a deliverance rather than as
a calamity. Under the influence of such feelings as these
Charles was desirous to depress the party which had resisted
his father.
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 1 29
The King's brother, James Duke of York, took the same
side. Though a libertine, James was diligent, methodical,
and fond of authority and business. His understanding was
singularly slow and narrow, and his temper obstinate, harsh,
and unforgiving. That such a prince should have looked with
no good will on the free institutions of England, and on the
party which was peculiarly zealous for those institutions, can
excite no surprise. As yet the Duke professed himself a
member of the Anglican Church : but he had already shown
inclinations which had seriously alarmed good Protestants.
The person on whom devolved at this time the greatest part
of the labour of governing was Edward Hyde, Chancellor of
the realm, who was soon created Earl of Clarendon, The
respect which we justly feel for Clarendon as a writer must not
blind us to the faults which he committed as a statesman.
Some of those faults, however, are explained and excused by
the unfortunate position in which he stood. He had, during
the first year of the Long Parliament, been honourably
distinguished among the senators who laboured to redress the
grievances of the nation. One of the most odious of those
grievances, the Council of York, had been removed in conse-
quence chiefly of his exertions. When the great schism took
place, when the reforming party and the conservative party
first appeared marshalled against each other, he with many
wise and good men took the conservative side. He thence-
forward followed the fortunes of the court, enjoyed as large a
share of the confidence of Charles the First as the reserved
nature and tortuous policy of that prince allowed to any
minister, and subsequently shared the exile and directed the
political conduct of Charles the Second. At the Restoration
Hyde became chief minister. In a few months it was
announced that he was closely related by affinity to the royal
house. His daughter had become, by a secret marriage,
Duchess of York, His grandchildren might perhaps wear the
crown. He was raised by this illustrious connection over the
heads of the old nobility of the land, and was for a time
supposed to be all powerful. In some respects he was well
fitted for his great place. No man wrote abler state papers.
No man spoke with more weight and dignity in Council and
in Parliament. No man was better acquainted with general
maxims of statecraft. No man observed the varieties of
character with a more discriminating eye. It must be added
that he had a strong sense of moral and religious obligation, a
sincere reverence for the laws of his country, and a conscienti-
130 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
ous regard for the honour and interest of the crown. But his
temper was sour, arrogant, and impatient of opposition.
Above all, he had been long an exile ; and this circumstance
alone would have completely disqualified him for the supreme
direction of affairs. It is scarcely possible that a politician, who
has been compelled by civil troubles to go into banishment, and
to pass many of the best years of his life abroad, can be fit, on
the day on which he returns to his native land, to be at the head
of the government. Clarendon was no exception to this rule.
He had left England with a mind heated by a fierce conflict
which had ended in the dow-nfall of his party and of his own
fortunes. From 1646 to 1660 he had lived beyond sea,
looking on all that passed at home from a great distance, and
through a false medium. His notions of public affairs were
necessarily derived from the reports of plotters, many of whom
were ruined and desperate men. Events naturally seemed to
him auspicious, not in proportion as they increased the
prosperity and glory of the nation, but in proportion as they
tended to hasten the hour of his own return. His wish, a wish
which he has not disguised, was that, till his countrymen brought
back the old line, they might never enjoy quiet or freedom.
At length he returned ; and, without having a single week to
look about him, to mix with society, to note the changes which
fourteen eventful years had produced in the national character
and feelings, he was at once set to rule the state. In such cir-
cumstances, a minister of the greatest tact and docility would
probably have fallen into serious errors. But tact and docility
made no part of the character of Clarendon. To him
England was still the England of his youth ; and he sternly
frowned down every theory and every practice which had
sprung up during his own exile. Though he was far from
meditating any attack on the ancient and undoubted power of
the House of Commons, he saw with extreme uneasiness the
growth of that power. The royal prerogative, for which he
had long suffered, and by which he had at length been raised
to wealth and dignity, was sacred in his eyes. The Round-
heads he regarded both with political and with personal
aversion. To the Anglican Church he had always been
strongly attached, and had repeatedly, where her interests
were concerned, separated himself with regret from his
dearest friends. His zeal for Episcopacy and for the Book
of Common Prayer was now more ardent than ever, and was
mingled with a vindictive hatred of the Puritans, which did
him little honour either as a statesman or as a Christian.
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND I3I
While the House of Commons which had recalled the royal
family was sitting, it was impossible to effect the reestablishment
of the old ecclesiastical system. Not only were the intentions
of the court strictly concealed, but assurances which quieted
the minds of the moderate Presbyterians were given by the
King in the most solemn manner. He had promised, before
his restoration, that he would grant liberty of conscience to his
subjects. He now repeated that promise, and added a promise
to use his best endeavours for the purpose of effecting a
compromise between the contending sects. He wished, he
said, to see the spiritual jurisdiction divided between bishops
and synods. The Liturgy should be revised by a body of
learned divines, one half of whom should be Presbyterians.
The questions respecting the surplice, the posture at the
Eucharist, and the sign of the cross in baptism, should be settled
in a way which would set tender consciences at ease. When
the King had thus laid asleep the vigilance of those whom he
most feared, he dissolved the Parliament. He had already
given his assent to an act by which an amnesty was granted,
with few exceptions, to all who, during the late troubles, had
been guilty of political offences. He had also obtained from
the Commons a grant for life of taxes, the annual produce of
which was estimated at twelve hundred thousand pounds. The
actual income, indeed, during some years, amounted to little
more than a million : but this sum, together with the hereditary
revenue of the crown, was then sufficient to defray the expenses
of the government in time of peace. Nothing was allowed for
a standing army. The nation was sick of the very name ; and
the least mention of such a force would have incensed and
alarmed all parties.
Early in 1661 took place a general election. The people
were mad with loyal enthusiasm. The capital was excited by
preparations for the most splendid coronation that had ever
been known. The result was that a body of representatives
was returned, such as England had never yet seen. A large
proportion of the successful candidates were men who had
fought for the crown and the Church, and whose minds had
been exasperated by many injuries and insults suffered at the
hands of the Roundheads. When the members met, the
passions which animated each individually acquired new
strength from sympathy. The House of Commons was, during
some years, more zealous for royalty than the King, more
zealous for episcopacy than the Bishops. Charles and
Clarendon were almost terrified at the completeness of their
132 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
own success. They found themselves in a situation not
unlike that in which Lewis the Eighteenth and the Duke of
Richelieu were placed while the Chamber of 18 15 was sitting.
Even if the King had been desirous to fulfil the promises
which he had made to the Presbyterians, it would have been
out of his power to do so. It was indeed only by the strong
exertion of his influence that he could prevent the victorious
Cavaliers from rescinding the act of indemnity, and retaliating
without mercy all that they had suffered.
The Commons began by resolving that every member should,
on pain of expulsion, take the sacrament according to the form
prescribed by the old Liturgy, and that the Covenant should
be burned by the hangman in Palace Yard. An act was passed,
which not only acknowledged the power of the sword to be
solely in the King, but declared that in no extremity whatever
could the two Houses be justified in withstanding him by
force. Another act was passed which required every officer
of a corporation to swear that he held resistance to the King's
authority to be in all cases unlawful. A few hotheaded men
wished to bring in a bill, which should at once annul all the
statutes passed by the Long Parliament, and should restore the
Star Chamber and the High Commission; but the reaction,
violent as it was, did not proceed quite to this length. It still
continued to be the law that a Parliament should be held
every three years : but the stringent clauses which directed the
returning officers to proceed to election at the proper time,
^ven without the royal writ, were repealed. The Bishops were
restored to their seats in the Upper House. The old ecclesi-
astical polity and the old Liturgy were revived without any
modification which had any tendency to conciliate even the
most reasonable Presbyterians. Episcopal ordination was now,
for the first time, made an indispensable qualification for
church preferment. About two thousand ministers of religion,
whose conscience did not suffer them to conform, were driven
from their benefices in one day. The dominant party exult-
ingly reminded the sufferers that the Long Parliament, when
at the height of power, had turned out a still greater number
of Royalist divines. The reproach was but too well founded :
but the Long Parliament had at least allowed to the divines
whom it ejected a provision sufficient to keep them from
starving ; and this example the Cavaliers, intoxicated with
animosity, had not the justice and humanity to follow.
Then came penal statutes against Nonconformists, statutes
for which precedents might too easily be found in the Puritan
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 1 33
legislation, but to which the King could not give his assent
without a breach of promises publicly made, in the most
important crisis of his life, to those on whom his fate depended.
The Presbyterians, in extreme distress and terror, fled to the
foot of the throne, and pleaded their recent services and the
royal faith solemnly and repeatedly plighted. The King
wavered. He could not deny his own hand and seal. He
could not but be conscious that he owed much to the
petitioners. He was little in the habit of resisting importunate
solicitation. His temper was not that of a persecutor. He
disliked the Puritans indeed ; but in him dislike was a languid
feehng, very little resembling the energetic hatred which had
burned in the heart of Laud. He was, moreover, partial to the
Roman Catholic religion ; and he knew that it would be
impossible to grant liberty of worship to the professors of that
religion without extending the same indulgence to Protestant
dissenters. He therefore made a feeble attempt to restrain
the intolerant zeal of the House of Commons ; but that House
was under the influence of far deeper convictions, and far
stronger passions than his own. After a faint struggle he
yielded, and passed, with the show of alacrity, a series of
odious acts against the separatists. It was made a crime to
attend a dissenting place of worship. A single justice of the
peace might convict without a jury, and might, for the third
offence, pass sentence for transportation beyond sea for seven
years. With refined cruelty it was provided that the offender
should not be transported to New England, where he was
likely to find sympathizing friends. If he returned to his own
country before the expiration of his term of exile, he was liable
to capital punishment. A new and most unreasonable test was
imposed on divines who had been deprived of their benefices
for nonconformity ; and all who refused to take it were pro-
hibited from coming within five miles of any town which was
governed by a corporation, of any town which was represented
in Parliament, or of any town where they had themselves
resided as ministers. The magistrates, by whom these rigorous
statutes were to be enforced, were in general men inflamed by
party spirit and by the remembrance of wrongs which they had
themselves suffered in the time of the Commonwealth. The
gaols were therefore soon crowded with dissenters ; and,
among the sufferers, were some of whose genius and virtue any
Christian society might well be proud.
The Church of England was not ungrateful for the pro-
tection which she received from the government. From the
I 34 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
first day of her existence, she had been attached to monarchy.
But, during the quarter of a century which followed the
Restoration, her zeal for royal authority and hereditary right
passed all bounds. She had suffered with the House of
Stuart. She had been restored with that House. She was
connected with it by common interests, friendships, and
enmities. It seemed impossible that a day could ever come
when the ties which bound her to the children of her august
martyr would be sundered, and when the loyalty in which she
gloried would cease to be a pleasing and profitable duty. She
accordingly magnified in fulsome phrase that prerogative which
was constantly employed to defend and to aggrandise her, and
reprobated, much at her ease, the depravity of those whom
oppression, from which she was exempt, had goaded to rebellion.
Her favourite theme was the doctrine of nonresistance. That
doctrine she taught without any qualification, and followed out
to all its extreme consequences. Her disciples were never
weary of repeating that in no conceivable case, not even if
England were cursed with a King resembling Busiris or
Phalaris, who, in defiance of law, and without the pretence of
justice, should daily doom hundreds of innocent victims to
torture and death, would all the Estates of the realm united
be justified in withstanding his tyranny by physical force.
Happily the principles of human nature afford abundant secu-
rity that such theories will never be more than theories. The
day of trial came : and the very men who had most loudly and
most sincerely professed this extravagant loyalty were, in
almost every county of England, arrayed in arms against the
throne.
Property all over the kingdom was now again changing
hands. The national sales, not having been confirmed by
Parliament, were regarded by the tribunals as nuUities. The
sovereign, the bishops, the deans, the chapters, the royalist
nobility and gentry, reentered on their confiscated estates, and
ejected even purchasers who had given fair prices. The losses
which the Cavaliers had sustained during the ascendency of
their opponents were thus in part repaired ; but in part only.
All actions for mesne profits were effectually barred by the
general amnesty ; and the numerous Royalists who, in order
to discharge fines imposed by the Parliament, or in order to
purchase the favour of powerful Roundheads, had sold lands
for much less than the real value, were not relieved from the
legal consequences of their own acts.
While these changes were in progress, a change still more
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 1 35
important took place in the morals and manners of the com-
munity. Those passions and tastes which, under the rule of
the Puritans, had been sternly repressed, and, if gratified at all,
had been gratified by stealth, broke forth with ungovernable
violence as soon as the check was withdrawn. Men flew to
frivolous amusements and to criminal pleasures with the
greediness which long and enforced abstinence naturally
produces. Little restraint was imposed by public opinion.
For the nation, nauseated with cant, suspicious of all pre-
tensions to sanctity, and still smarting from the recent
tyranny of rulers austere in life and powerful in prayer,
looked for a time with complacency on the softer and gayer
vices. Still less restraint was imposed by the government.
Indeed there was no excess which was not encouraged by the
ostentatious profligacy of the king and of his favourite
courtiers. A few counsellors of Charles the First, who were
now no longer young, retained the decorous gravity which had
been thirty years before in fashion at Whitehall. Such were
Clarendon himself, and his friends, Thomas Wriothesley, Earl
of Southampton, Lord Treasurer, and James Butler, Duke of
Ormond, who, having through many vicissitudes struggled
gallantly for the royal cause in Ireland, now governed that
kingdom as Lord Lieutenant. But neither the memory of the
services of these men, nor their great power in the state, could
protect them from the sarcasms which modish vice loves to
dart at obsolete virtue. The praise of politeness and vivacity
could now scarcely be obtained except by some violation of
decorum. Talents great and various assisted to spread the
contagion. Ethical philosophy had recently taken a form well
suited to please a generation equally devoted to monarchy
and to vice. Thomas Hobes had, in language more precise
and luminous than has ever been employed by any other
metaphysical writer, maintained that the will of the prince was
the standard of right and wrong, and that every subject ought
to be ready to profess Popery, Mahometanism, or Paganism at
the royal command. Thousands who were incompetent to
appreciate what was really valuable in his speculations, eagerly
welcomed a theory which, while it exalted the kingly office,
relaxed the obligations of morality, and degraded religion into
a mere affair of state. Hobbisra soon became an almost
essential part of the character of the fine gentleman. All the
hghter kinds of literature were deeply tainted by the prevailing
licentiousness. Poetry stooped to be the pandar of every low
desire. Ridicule, instead of putting guilt and error to the
136 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
blush, turned her formidable shafts against innocence and
truth. The restored Church contended indeed against the
prevailing immorality, but contended feebly, and with half a
heart. It was necessary to the decorum of her character that
she should admonish her erring children. But her admonitions
were given in a somewhat perfunctory manner. Her attention
was elsewhere engaged. Her whole soul was in the work of
crushing the Puritans, and of teaching her disciples to give
unto Csesar the things which were Caesar's. She had been
pillaged and oppressed by the party which preached an austere
morality. She had been restored to opulence and honour by
libertines. Little as the men of mirth and fashion were
disposed to shape their lives according to her precepts, they
were yet ready to fight knee deep in blood for her cathedrals
and palaces, for every line of her rubric and every thread of her
vestments. If the debauched Cavalier haunted brothels and
gambling houses, he at least avoided conventicles. If he never
spoke without uttering ribaldry and blasphemy, he made some
amends by his eagerness to send Baxter and Howe to gaol for
preaching and praying. Thus the clergy, for a time, made war
on schism with so much vigour that they had little leisure to
make war on vice. The ribaldry of Etherege and Wycherley
W£LS, in the presence and under the special sanction of the
head of the Church, publicly recited by female lips in female
ears, while the author of the Pilgrim's Progress languished in a
dungeon for the crime of proclaiming the gospel to the poor.
It is an unquestionable and a most instructive fact that the
years during which the political power of the Anglican
heirarchy was in the zenith were precisely the years during
which national virtue was at the lowest point.
Scarcely any rank or profession escaped the infection of the
prevailing immorahty; but those persons who made politics
their business were perhaps the most corrupt part of the
corrupt society. For they were exposed not only to the same
noxious influences which affected the nation generally, but also
to a taint of a peculiar and of a most malignant kind. Their
character had been formed amidst frequent and violent revolu-
tions and counterrevolutions. In the course of a few years
they had seen the ecclesiastical and civil polity of their country
repeatedly changed. They had seen an Episcopal Church
persecuting Puritans, a Puritan Church persecuting Episcopa-
lians, and an Episcopal Church persecuting Puritans again.
They had seen hereditary monarchy abolished and restored.
They had seen the Long Parliament thrice supreme in the
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND I 37
state and thrice dissolved amidst the curses and laughter of
millions. They had seen a new dynasty rapidly rising to the
height of power and glory, and then on a sudden hurled down
from the chair of state without a struggle. They had seen
a new representative system devised, tried, and abandoned.
They had seen a new House of Lords created and scattered.
They had seen great masses of property violently transferred
from Cavaliers to Roundheads, and from Roundheads back to
Cavaliers. During these events no man could be a stirring and
thriving politician who was not prepared to change with every
change of fortune. It was only in retirement that any person
could long keep the character either of a steady Royalist or of
a steady Republican. One who, in such an age, is determined
to attain civil greatness must renounce all thought of con-
sistency. Instead of affecting immutability in the midst of
endless mutation, he must be always on the watch for the indi-
cations of a coming reaction. He must seize the exact moment
for deserting a falling cause. Having gone all lengths with a
faction while it was uppermost, he must suddenly extricate
himself from it when its difificulties begin, must assail it, must
persecute it, must enter on anew career of power and prosperity
in company with new associates. His situation naturally
developes in him to the highest degree a peculiar class of
abilities and a peculiar class of vices. He becomes quick of
observation and fertile of resource. He catches without effort
the tone of any sect or party with which he chances to mingle.
He discerns the signs of the times with a sagacity which to the
multitude appears miraculous, with a sagacity resembling that
with which a veteran police officer pursues the faintest indica-
tions of crime, or with which a Mohawk warrior follows a track
through the woods. But we shall seldom find in a statesman so
trained, integrity, constancy, any of the virtues of the noble
family of Truth. He has no faith in any doctrine, no zeal for
any cause. He has seen so many old institutions swept away,
that he has no reverence for prescription. He has seen so
many new institutions from which much had been expected
produce rnere disappointment, that he has no hope of improve-
ment. He sneers alike at those who are anxious to preserve and
at those who are eager to reform. There is nothing in the
state which he could not, without a scruple or a blush, join in
defending or in destroying. Fidelity to opinions and to friends
seems to him mere dulness and wrongheadedness. Politics he
regards, not as a science of which the object is the happiness
of mankind, but as an exciting game of mixed chance and
138 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
skill, at which a dexterous and lucky player may win an estate,
a coronet, perhaps a crown, and at which one rash move may
lead to the loss of fortune and of life. Ambition, which, in
good times, and in good minds, is half a virtue, now, disjoined
from every elevated and philanthropic sentiment, becomes a
selfish cupidity scarcely less ignoble than avarice. Among those
politicians who, from the Restoration to the accession of the
House of Hanover, were at the head of the great parties in the
state, very few can be named whose reputation is not stained
by what, in our age, would be called gross perfidy and cor-
ruption. It is scarcely an exaggeration to say that the most
unprincipled public men who have taken part in affairs within
our memory would, if tried by the standard which was in
fashion during the latter part of the seventeenth century,
deserve to be regarded as scrupulous and disinterested.
While these political, religious, and moral changes were
taking place in England, the royal authority had been without
difficulty reestablished in every other part of the British islands.
In Scotland the restoration of the Stuarts had been hailed
with delight ; for it was regarded as the restoration of national
independence. And true it was that the yoke which Cromwell
had imposed was, in appearance, taken away, that the Estates
again met in their old hall at Edinburgh, and that the Senators
of the College of Justice again administered the Scottish law
according to the old forms. Yet was the independence of the
little kingdom necessarily rather nominal than real : for, as
long as the King had England on his side, he had nothing to
apprehend from disaffection in his other dominions. He was
now in such a situation that he could renew the attempt which
had proved destructive to his father without any danger of his
father's fate. Charles the First had tried to force his own
religion by his regal power on the Scots at a moment when
both his religion and his regal power were unpopular in
England ; and he had not only failed, but had raised troubles
which had ultimately cost him his crown and his head. Times
had now changed : England was zealous for monarchy and
prelacy; and therefore the scheme which in the .preceding
generation had been in the highest degree imprudent might be
resumed with little risk to the throne. The government
resolved to set up a prelatical church in Scotland. The design
was disapproved by every Scotchman whose judgment was
entitled to respect. Some Scottish statesmen who were zealous
for the king's prerogative had been bred Presbyterians.
Though httle troubled with scruples, they retained a preference
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND I 39
for the religion of their childhood ; and they well knew how
strong a hold that religion had on the hearts of their country-
men. They remonstrated strongly : but, when they found that
they remonstrated in vain, they had not virtue enough to
persist in an opposition which would have given offence to
their master ; and several of them stooped to the wickedness
and baseness of persecuting what in their consciences they
believed to be the purest form of Christianity. The Scottish
Parliament was so constituted that it had scarcely ever offered
any serious opposition even to Kings much weaker than Charles
then was. Episcopacy, therefore, was established by law. As
to the form of worship, a large discretion was left to the clergy.
In some churches the English Liturgy was used. In others,
the ministers selected from that Liturgy such prayers and
thanksgivings as were likely to be least offensive to the people.
But in general the doxology was sung at the close of public
worship, and the Apostles' Creed was recited when baptism
was administered. By the great body of the Scottish nation
the new Church was detested both as superstitious and as
foreign ; as tainted with the corruptions of Rome, and as a
mark of the predominance of England. There was, however,
no general insurrection. The country was not what it had
been twenty-two years before. Disastrous war and alien
domination had tamed the spirit of the people. The
aristocracy, which was held in great honour by the middle
class and by the populace, had put itself at the head of the
movement against Charles the First, but proved obsequious to
Charles the Second. From the English Puritans no aid was
now to be expected. They were a feeble party, proscribed
both by law and by public opinion. The bulk of the Scottish
nation, therefore, sullenly submitted, and, with many misgivings
of conscience, attended the ministrations of the Episcopal
clergy, or of Presbyterian divines who had consented to accept
from the government a half toleration, known by the name of
the Indulgence. But there were, particularly in the western
lowlands, many fierce and resolute men, who held that the
obligation to observe the Covenant was paramount to the
obligation to obey the magistrate. These people, in defiance
of the law, persisted in meeting to worship God after their own
fashion. The Indulgence they regarded, not as a partial
reparation of the wrongs inflicted by the magistrate on the
Church, but as a new wrong, the more odious because it was
disguised under the appearance of a benefit. Persecution,
they said, could only kill the body ; but the black Indulgence
T40 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
was deadly to the soul. Driven from the towns they assembled
on heaths and mountains. Attacked by the civil power, they
without scruple repelled force by force. At every conventicle
they mustered in arms. They repeatedly broke out into open
rebellion. They were easily defeated, and mercilessly punished :
but neither defeat nor punishment could subdue their spirit.
Hunted down like wild beasts, tortured till their bones were
beaten flat, imprisoned by hundreds, hanged by scores, exposed
at one time to the license of soldiers from England, abandoned
at another time to the mercy of bands of marauders from the
Highlands, they still stood at bay in a mood so savage that the
boldest and mightiest oppressor could not but dread the
audacity of their despair.
Such was, during the reign of Charles the Second, the state
of Scotland. Ireland was not less distracted. In that island
existed feuds, compared with which the hottest animosities of
English politicians were lukewarm. The enmity between the
Irish Cavaliers and the Irish Roundheads were almost forgotten
in the fiercer enmity which raged between the English and
the Celtic races. The interval between the Episcopalian and
the Presbyterian seemed to vanish, when compared with the
interval which separated both from the Papist. During the
late civil troubles the greater part of the Irish soil had been
transferred from the vanquished nation to the victors. To
the favour of the crown few either of the old or of the new
occupants had any pretensions. The despoilers and the
despoiled had, for the most part, been rebels alike. The
government was soon perplexed and wearied by the conflicting
claims and mutual accusations of the two incensed factions.
Those colonists among whom Cromwell had portioned out
the conquered territory, and whose descendants are still called
CromweUians, represented that the aboriginal inhabitants were
deadly enemies of the English nation under every dynasty, and
of the Protestant religion in every form. They described and
exaggerated the atrocities which had disgraced the insurrection
of Ulster : they urged the King to follow up with resolution
the policy of the Protector; and they were not ashamed to
hint that there would never be peace in Ireland till the old
Irish race should be extirpated. The Roman Catholics
extenuated their offence as they best might, and expatiated in
piteous language on the severity of their punishment, which,
in truth, had not been lenient. They implored Charles not
to confound the innocent with the guilty, and reminded him
that many of the guilty had atoned for their fault by returning
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND I4I
to their allegiance, and by defending his rights against the
murderers of his father. The court, sick of the importunities
of two parties, neither of which it had any reason to love, at
length relieved itself from trouble by dictating a compromise.
That cruel, but most complete and energetic system, by which
Oliver had proposed to make the island thoroughly English,
was abandoned. The Cromwellians were induced to relinquish
a third part of their acquisitions. The land thus surrendered
was capriciously divided among claimants whom the govern-
ment chose to favour. But great numbers who protested that
they were innocent of all disloyalty, and some persons who
boasted that their loyalty had been signally displayed, obtained
neither restitution nor compensation, and filled France and
Spain with outcries against the injustice and ingratitude of
the House of Stuart.
Meantime the government had, even in England, ceased
to be popular. The Royalists had begun to quarrel with the
court and with each other; and the party which had been
vanquished, trampled down, and, as it seemed, annihilated,
but which had still retained a strong principle of life, again
raised its head, and renewed the interminable war.
Had the administration been faultless, the enthusiasm with
which the return of the King and the termination of the
military tyranny had been hailed could not have been per-
manent. For it is the law of our nature that such fits of
excitement shall always be followed by remissions. The
manner in which the court abused its victory made the remis-
sion speedy and complete. Every moderate man was shocked
by the insolence, cruelty and perfidy with which the Noncon-
formists were treated. The penal laws had effectually purged
the oppressed party of those insincere members whose vices
had disgraced it, and had made it again an honest and pious
body of men. The Puritan, a conqueror, a ruler, a persecutor,
a sequestrator, had been detested. The Puritan, betrayed and
evil intreated, deserted by all the timeservers who, in his
prosperity, had claimed brotherhood with him, hunted from
his home, forbidden under severe penalties to pray or receive
the sacrament according to his conscience, yet still firm in his
resolution to obey God rather than man, was, in spite of some
unpleasing recollections, an object of pity and respect to well
constituted minds. These feelings became stronger when it
was noised abroad that the court was not disposed to treat
Papists with the same rigour which had been shown to
Presbyterians. A vague suspicion that the King and the
142 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Duke were not sincere Protestants sprang up in many quarters.
Many persons too who had been disgusted by the austerity
and hypocrisy of the Pharisees of the Commonwealth began
to be still more disgusted by the open profligacy of the court
and of the Cavaliers, and were disposed to doubt whether the
sullen preciseness of Praise God Barebone might not be
preferable to the outrageous profaneness and licentiousness
of the Buckinghams and Sedleys. Even immoral men, who
were not utterly destitute of sense and public spirit, complained
that the government treated the most serious matters as trifles,
and made trifles its serious business. A King might be.
pardoned for amusing his leisure with wine, wit, and beauty.
But it was intolerable that he should sink into a mere
saunterer and voluptuary, that the gravest affairs of state should
be neglected, and that the public service should be starved
and the finances deranged in order that harlots and parasites
might grow rich.
A large body of Royalists joined in these complaints, and
added many sharp reflections on the King's ingratitude. His
whole revenue, indeed, would not have suflSced to reward
them all in proportion to their own consciousness of desert.
For to every distressed gentleman who had fought under
Rupert or Derby his own services seemed eminently merito-
rious, and his own sufferings eminently severe. Every one
had flattered himself that, whatever became of the rest, he
should be largely recompensed for all that he had lost during
the civil troubles, and that the restoration of the monarchy
would be followed by the restoration of his own dilapidated
fortunes. None of these expectants could restrain his indigna-
tion, when he found that he was as poor under the King as he
had been under the Rump or the Protector. The negligence
and extravagance of the court excited the bitter indignation of
these loyal veterans. They justly said that one half of what
His Majesty squandered on concubines and buffoons would
gladden the hearts of hundreds of old Cavaliers who, after
cutting down their oaks and melting their plate to help his
father, now wandered about in threadbare suits, and did not
know where to turn for a meal.
At the same time a sudden fall of rents took place. The
income of every landed proprietor was diminished by five
shillings in the pound. The cry of agricultural distress rose
from every shire in the kingdom ; and for that distress the
government was, as usual, held accountable. The gentry,
compelled to retrench their expenses for a period, saw with
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND I43
indignation the increasing splendour and profusion of White-
hall, and were immovably fixed in the belief that the money
which ought to have supported their households had, by some
inexplicable process, gone to the favourites of the king.
The minds of men were now in such a temper that every
public act excited discontent. Charles had taken to wife
Catharine Princess of Portugal. The marriage was generally
disliked ; and the murmurs became loud when it appeared
that the King was not likely to have any legitimate posterity.
Dunkirk, won by Oliver from Spam, was sold to Lewis the
Fourteenth, King of France. This bargain excited general
indignation. Englishmen were already beginning to observe
with uneasiness the progress of the French power, and to
regard the House of Bourbon with the same feeling with
which their grandfathers had regarded the House of Austria.
Was it wise, men asked, at such a time, to make any addition
to the strength of a monarchy already too formidable ? Dun-
kirk was, moreover, prized by the people, not merely as a
place of arms, and as a key to the Low Countries, but also as
a trophy of English valour. It was to the subjects of Charles
what Calais had been to an earUer generation, and what the
rock of Gibraltar, so manfully defended, through disastrous
and perilous years, against the fleets and armies of a mighty
coalition, is to ourselves. The plea of economy migiit have
had some weight, if it had been urged by an economical
government. But it was notorious that the charges of Dunkirk
fell far short of the sums which were wasted at court in vice
and folly. It seemed insupportable that a sovereign, profuse
beyond example in all that regarded his own pleasures, should
be niggardly in all that regarded the safety and honour of the
state.
The public discontent was heightened, when it was found
that, while Dunkirk was abandoned on the plea of economy,
the fortress of Tangier, which was part of the dower of Queen
Catharine, was repaired and kept up at an enormous charge.
That place was associated with no recollections gratifying to
the national pride : it could in no way promote the national
interests : it involved us in inglorious, unprofitable, and inter-
minable wars with tribes of half savage Mussulmans ; and it
was situated in a climate singularly unfavourable to the health
and vigour of the English race.
But the murmurs excited by these errors were faint, when
compared with the clamours which soon broke forth. The
government engaged in war with the United Provinces. The
144 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
House of Commons readily voted sums unexampled in our
history, sums exceeding those which had supported the fleets
and armies of Cromwell at the time when his power was the
terror of all the world. But such was the extravagance, dis-
honesty, and incapacity of those who had succeeded to his
authority, that this liberality proved worse than useless. The
sycophants of the court, ill qualified to contend against the
great men who then directed the arms of Holland, against
such a statesman as De Witt, and such a commander as De
Ruyter, made fortunes rapidly, while the sailors mutinied from
very hunger, while the dockyards were unguarded, while the
ships were leaky and without rigging. It was at length
determined to abandon all schemes of offensive war; and it
soon appeared that even a defensive war was a task too hard
for that administration. The Dutch fleet sailed up the
Thames, and burned the ships of war which lay at Chatham.
It was said that, on the very day of that great humiliation,
the King feasted with the ladies of his seraglio, and amused
himself with hunting a moth about the supper room. Then,
at length, tardy justice was done to the memory of Oliver.
Everywhere men magnified his valour, genius, and patriotism.
Everywhere it was remembered how, when he ruled, all foreign
powers had trembled at the name of England, how the States
General, now so haughty, had crouched at his feet, and how,
when it was known that he was no more, Amsterdam was
lighted up as for a great deliverance, and children ran along
the canals, shouting for joy that the devil was dead. Even
Royalists exclaimed that the State could be saved only by
calling the old soldiers of the Commonwealth to arms. Soon
the capital began to feel the miseries of a blockade. Fuel was
scarcely to be procured Tilbury Fort, the place where Eliza-
beth had, Avith manly spirit, hurled foul scorn at Parma and
Spain, was insulted by the invaders. The roar of foreign guns
was heard, for the first and last time, by the citizens of
London. In the Council it was seriously proposed that, if
the enemy advanced, the Tower should be abandoned. Great
multitudes of people assembled in the streets crying out that
England was bought and sold. The houses and carriages of
the ministers were attacked by the populace; and it seemed
likely that the government would have to deal at once with
an invasion and with an insurrection. The extreme danger,
it is true, soon passed by. A treaty was concluded, very
different from the treaties which Oliver had been in the habit
of signing ; and the nation was once more at peace, but was
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND I45
in a mood scarcely less fierce and sullen than in the days of
shipmoney.
The discontent engendered by maladministration was
heightened by calamities which the best administration could
not have averted. While the ignominious war with Holland
was raging, London suffered two great disasters, such as never,
in so short a space of time, befell one city. A pestilence,
surpassing in horror any that during three centuries had
visited the island, swept away, in six months, more than a
hundred thousand human beings. And scarcely had the
dead cart ceased to go its rounds, when a fire, such as had
not been known in Europe since the conflagration of Rome
under Nero, laid in ruins the whole City, from the Tower to
the Temple, and from the river to the purlieus of Smithfield.
Had there been a general election while the nation was
smarting under so many disgraces and misfortunes, it is pro-
bable that the Roundheads would have regained ascendency in
the state. But the Parliament was still the Cavalier Parliament,
chosen in the transport of loyalty which had followed the
Restoration. Nevertheless it soon became evident that no
English legislature, however loyal, would now consent to be
merely what the legislature had been under the Tudors. From
the death of Elizabeth to the eve of the civil war, the Puritans,
who predominated in the representative body, had been
constantly, by a dexterous use of the power of the purse,
encroaching on the province of the executive government.
The gentlemen who, after the Restoration, filled the Lov/er
House, though they abhorred the Puritan name, were well
pleased to inherit the fruit of the Puritan policy. They were
indeed most willing to employ the power which they possessed
in the state for the purpose of making their King mighty and
honoured, both at home and abroad : but with the power itself
they were resolved not to part. The great English revolution
of the seventeenth century, that is to say, the transfer of the
supreme control of the executive administration from the cro^^^l
to the House of Commons, was through the whole long exist-
ence of this Parliament, proceeding noiselessly, but rapidly and
steadily. Charles, kept poor by his follies and vices, wanted
money. The Commons alone could legally grant him money.
They could not be prevented from putting their own price on
their grants. The price which they put on their grants was
this, that they should be allowed to interfere with every one of
the King's prerogatives, to wring from him his consent to laws
which he disliked, to break up cabinets, to dictate the course
146 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
of foreign policy, and even to direct the administration of war.
To the royal office and the royal person, they loudly and sin-
cerely professed the strongest attachment. But to Clarendon
they owed no allegiance ; and they fell on him as furiously as
their predecessors had fallen on Strafford. The minister's
virtues and vices alike contributed to his ruin. He was the
ostensible head of the administration, and was therefore held
responsible even for those acts which he had strongly, but
vainly, opposed in Council. He was regarded by the Puritans
and by all who pitied them, as an implacable bigot, a second
Laud, with much more than Laud's understanding. He had
on all occasions maintained that the Act of Indemnity ought
to be strictly observed ; and this part of his conduct, though
highly honourable to him, made him hateful to all those Royal-
ists who wished to repair their ruined fortunes by suing the
Roundheads for damages and mesne profits. The Presbyte-
rians of Scotland attributed to him the downfall of their Church.
The Papists of Ireland attributed to him the loss of their lands.
As father of the Duchess of York, he had an obvious motive
for wishing that there might be a barren Queen ; and he was
therefore suspected of having purposely recommended one.
The sale of Dunkirk was justly imputed to him. For the war
with Holland he was, with less justice, held accountable. His
hot temper, his arrogant deportment, the indelicate eagerness
with which he grasped at riches, the ostentation with which he
squandered them, his picture gallery, filled with masterpieces
of Vandyke which had once been the property of ruined
Cavaliers, his palace, which reared its long and stately front
right opposite to the humbler residence of our Kings, drew on
him much deserved, and some undeserved, censure. When
the Dutch fleet was in the Thames, it was against the Chan-
cellor that the rage of the populace was chiefly directed. His
windows were broken ; the trees of his garden were cut down ;
and a gibbet was set up before his door. But nowhere was he
more detested than in the House of Commons. He was
unable to perceive that the time was fast approaching when
that House, if it continued to exist at all, must be supreme in
the state, when the management of that House would be the
most important department of politics, and when, without the
help of men possessing the ear of that House, it would be
impossible to carry on the government. He obstinately per-
sisted in considering the Parliament as a body in no respect
differing from the Parliament which had been sitting when,
forty years before, he first began to study law at the Temple.
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND I47
He did not wish to deprive the legislature of those powers
which were inherent in it by the old constitution of the realm :
biit the new development of those powers, though a develop-
ment natural, inevitable, and to be prevented only by utterly
destroying the powers themselves, disgusted and alarmed him.
Nothing would have induced him to put the great seal to
a writ for raising shipmoney, or to give his voice in Council
for committing a member of Parliament to the Tower, on
account of words spoken in debate : but, when the Commons
began to inquire in what manner the money voted for the
war had been wasted, and to examine into the maladminis-
tration of the navy, he flamed with indignation. Such inquiry,
according to him, was out of their province. He admitted that
the House was a most loyal assembly, that it had done good
service to the crown, and that its intentions were excellent.
But, both in public and in the closet, he, on every occasion,
expressed his concern that gentlemen so sincerely attached to
monarchy should unadvisedly incroach on the prerogative of
the monarch. Widely as they differed in spirit from the
members of the Long Parliament, they yet, he said, imitated
that Parliament in meddling with matters which lay beyond
the sphere of the Estates of the realm, and which were subject
to the authority of the crown alone. The country, he main-
tained, would never be well governed till the knights of shires
and the burgesses were content to be what their predecessors
had been in the days of Elizabeth. All the plans which men
more observant than himself of the signs of that time proposed,
for the purpose of maintaining a good understanding between
the Court and the Commons, he disdainfully rejected as crude
projects, inconsistent with the old polity of England. Towards
the young orators, who were rising to distinction and authority
in the Lower House, his deportment was ungracious ; and he
succeeded in making them, with scarcely an exception, his
deadly enemies. Indeed one of his most serious faults was an
inordinate contempt for youth : and this contempt was the
more unjustifiable, because his own experience in English
politics was by no means proportioned to his age. For so
great a part of his life had been passed abroad that he knew
less of that world in which he found himself on his return than
many who might have been his sons.
For these reasons he was disliked by the Commons. For
very different reasons he was equally disliked by the Court.
His morals as well as his politics were those of an earlier
generation. Even when he was a young law student, living
148 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
much with men of wit and pleasure, his natural gravity and his
religious principles had to a great extent preserved him from
the contagion of fashionable debauchery ; and he was by no
means likely, in advanced years and in declining health, to turn
libertine. On the vices of the young and gay he looked with
an aversion almost as bitter and contemptuous as that which
he felt for the theological erorrs of the sectaries. He missed
no opportunity of showing his scorn of the mimics, revellers,
and courtesans who crowded the palace ; and the admonitions
which he addressed to the King himself were very sharp, and,
what Charles disliked still more, very long. Scarcely any
voice was raised in favour of a minister loaded with the
double odium of faults which roused the fury of the people,
and of virtues which annoyed and importuned the sovereign.
Southampton was no more. Ormond performed the duties of
friendship manfully and faithfully, but in vain. The Chancellor
fell with a great ruin. The seal was taken from him : the
Commons impeached him : his head was not safe : he fled
from the country : an act was passed which doomed him to
perpetual exile ; and those who had assailed and undermined
him began to struggle for the fragments of his power.
The sacrifice of Clarendon in some degree took off the edge
of the public appetite for revenge. Yet was the anger excited
by the profusion and negligence of the government, and by the
miscarriages of the late war, by no means extinguished. The
counsellors of Charles, with the fate of the Chancellor before
their eyes, were anxious for their own safety. They accord-
ingly advised their master to soothe the irritation which pre-
vailed both in the Parliament and throughout the country, and
for that end, to take a step which has no parallel in the history
of the House of Stuart, and which was worthy of the prudence
and magnanimity of Oliver.
We have now reached a point at which the history of the
great English revolution begins to be complicated with the
history of foreign politics. The power of Spain had, during
many years, been declining. She still, it is true, held in
Europe the Milanese and the two Sicilies, Belgium, and
Franche Comte. In America her dominions still spread, on
both sides of the equator, far beyond the limits of the torrid
zone. But this great body had been smitten with palsy, and
was not only incapable of giving molestation to other states,
but could not, without assistance, repel aggression. France
was now, beyond all doubt, the greatest power in Europe.
Her resources have, since those days, absolutely increased,
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 1 49
but have not increased so fast as the resources of England.
It must also be remembered that, a hundred and eighty years
ago, the Empire of Russia, now a monarchy of the first class, was
as entirely out of the system of European politics as Abys-
sinia or Siam, that the House of Brandenburg was then hardly
more powerful than the House of Saxony, and that the republic
of the United States had not then begun to exist. The
weight of France, therefore, though still very considerable,
has relatively diminished. Her territory was not in the days
of Lewis the Fourteenth quite so extensive as at present :
but it was large, compact, fertile, well placed both for attack
and for defence, situated in a happy climate, and inhabited
by a brave, active, and ingenious people. The state impli-
citly obeyed the direction of a single mind. The great fiefs
which, three hundred years before, had been, in all but name,
independent principahties, had been annexed to the crown.
Only a few old men could remember the last meeting of
the States General. The resistance which the Huguenots,
the nobles, and the parliaments had offered to the kingly
power, had been put down by the two great Cardinals who
had ruled the nation during forty years. The government
was now a despotism, but, at least in its dealings with the
upper classes, a mild and generous despotism, tempered by
courteous manners and chivalrous sentiments. The means at
the disposal of the sovereign were, for that age, truly for-
midable. His revenue, raised, it is true, by a severe and .
unequal taxation which pressed heavily on the cultivators of
the soil, far exceeded that of any other potentate. His army,
excellently disciplined, and commanded by the greatest gen-
erals then living, already consisted of more than a hundred
and twenty thousand men. Such an array of regular troops
had not been seen in Europe since the downfall of the
Roman empire. Of maritime powers France was not the first.
But, though she had rivals on the sea, she had not yet a
superior. Such was her strength during the last forty years
of the seventeenth century, that no enemy could singly with-
stand her, and that two great coalitions, in which half
Christendom was united against her, failed of success.
The personal qualities of the French King added to the
respect inspired by the power and importance of his kingdom.
No sovereign has ever represented the majesty of a great state
with more dignity and grace. He was his own prime minister,
and performed the duties of that arduous situation with an
ability and an industry which could not be reasonably expected
I^O HISTORY OF ENGLAND
from one who had m infancy succeeded to a crown, and who
had been surrounded by flatterers before he could speak. He
had shown, in an eminent degree, two talents invaluable to a
prince, the talent of choosing his servants well, and the talent
of appropriating to himself the chief part of the credit of their
acts. In his dealings with foreign powers he had some
generosity, but no justice. To unhappy allies who threw
themselves at his feet, and had no hope but in his compassion,
he extended his protection with a romantic disinterestedness,
which seemed better suited to a knight errant than to a states-
man. But he broke through the most sacred ties of public
faith without scruple or shame, whenever they interfered with
his interest, or with what he called his glory. His perfidy and
violence, however, excited less enmity than the insolence with
which he constantly reminded his neighbours of his own great-
ness and of their littleness. He did not at this time profess
the austere devotion which, at a later period, gave to his court
the aspect of a monastery. On the contrary, he was as
licentious, though by no means as frivolous and indolent, as his
brother of England. But he was a sincere Roman Catholic ;
and both his conscience and his vanity impelled him to use his
power for the defence and propagation of the true faith, after
the example of his renowned predecessors, Clovis, Charlemagne,
and Saint Lewis.
Our ancestors naturally looked with serious alarm on the
growing power of France. This feeling, in itself perfectly
reasonable, was mingled with other feelings less praiseworthy.
France was our old enemy. It was against France that the
most glorious battles recorded in our annals had been fought.
The conquest of France had been twice effected by the
Plantagenets. The loss of France had been long remembered
as a great national disaster. The title of King of France
was still borne by our sovereigns. The lilies of France still
appeared, mingled with our own lions, on the shield of the
House of Stuart. In the sixteenth century the dread inspired
by Spain had suspended the animosity of which France had
anciently been the object. But the dread inspired by Spain
had given place to contemptuous compassion ; and France was
again regarded as our national foe. The sale of Dunkirk to
France had been the most generally unpopular act of the
restored King. Attachment to France had been prominent
among the crimes imputed by the Commons to Clarendon.
Even in trifles the public feeling showed itself. When a brawl
took place in the streets of Westminster between the retinues
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 1^1
of the French and Spanish embassies, the populace, though
forcibly prevented from interfering, had given unequivocal
proofs that the old antipathy was not extinct.
France and Spain were now engaged in a more serious
contest. One of the chief objects of the policy of Lewis
throughout his life was to extend his dominions towards the
Rhine. For this end he had engaged in war with Spain, and
he was now in the full career of conquest. The United
Provinces saw with anxiety the progress of his arms. That
renowned federation had reached the height of power, prosperity,
and glory. The Batavian territory, conquered from the
waves, and defended against them by human art, was in extent
little superior to the principality of Wales. But all that narrow
space was a busy and populous hive, in which new wealth was
every day created, and in which vast masses of old wealth were
hoarded. The aspect of Holland, the rich cultivation, the
innumera.ble canals, the ever whirling mills, the endless fleets
of barges, the quick succession of great towns, the ports
bristling with thousands of masts, the large and stately
mansions, the trim villas, the richly furnished apartments, the
picture galleries, the summer houses, the tulip beds, produced
on English travellers in that age an effect similar to the effect
which the first sight of England now produces on a Norwegian
or a Canadian. The States General had been compelled to
humble themselves before Cromwell. But after the Restoration
they had taken their revenge, had waged war with success
against Charles, and had concluded peace on honourable terms.
Rich, however, as the Republic was, and highly considered in
Europe, she was no match for the power of Lewis. She
apprehended, not without good cause, that his kingdom might
soon be extended to her frontiers ; and she might well dread
the immediate vicinity of a monarch so great, so ambitious,
and so unscrupulous. Yet it was not easy to devise any
expedient which might avert the danger. The Dutch alone
could not turn the scale against France. On the side of the
Rhine no help was to be expected. Several German princes
had been gained by Lewis ; and the Emperor himself was
embarrassed by the discontents of Hungary. England was
separated from the United Provinces by the recollection of
cruel injuries recently inflicted and endured ; and her policy
had, since the Restoration, been so devoid of wisdom and
spirit, that it was scarcely possible to expect from her any
valuable assistance.
But the fate of Clarendon and the growing ill humour of
F34
I_5'2 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
the Parliament determined the advisers of Charles to adopt
on a sudden a policy which amazed and delighted the nation.
The English resident at Brussels, Sir William Temple, one
of the most expert diplomatists and most pleasing writers of
that age, had already represented to his court that it was both
desirable and practicable to enter into engagements with the
States General for the purpose of checking the progress of
France. For a time his suggestions had been slighted ; but
it was now thought expedient to act on them. He was com-
missioned to negotiate with the States General. He proceeded
to the Hague, and soon came to an understanding with John
De Witt, then the chief minister of Holland. Sweden, small
as her resources were, had, forty years before, been raised by
the genius of Gustavus Adolphus to a high rank among
European powers, and had not yet descended to her natural
position. She was induced to join on this occasion with Eng-
land and the States. Thus was formed that coalition known
as the Triple Alliance. Lewis showed signs of vexation and
resentment, but did not think it politic to draw on himself the
hostility of such a confederacy in addition to that of Spain.
He consented, therefore, to relinquish a large part of the terri-
tory which his armies had occupied. Peace was restored to
Europe ; and the English government, lately an object of
general contempt, was, during a few months, regarded by
foreign powers with respect scarcely less than that which the
Protector had inspired.
At home the Triple Alliance was popular in the highest
degree. It gratified alike national animosity and national
pride. It put a limit to the encroachments of a powerful and
ambitious neighbour. It bound the leading Protestant states
together in close union. Cavaliers and Roundheads rejoiced
in common : but the joy of the Roundhead was even greater
than that of the Cavalier. For England had now allied her-
self strictly with a country republican in government and
Presbyterian in religion, against a country ruled by an arbitrary
prince and attached to the Roman Catholic Church. The
House of Commons loudly applauded the treaty ; and some
uncourtly grumblers described it as the only good thing that
had been done since the King came in.
The King, however, oared little for the approbation of his
Parliament or of his people. The Triple Alliance he regarded
merely as a temporary expedient for quieting discontents
which had seemed likely to become serious. The independ-
ence, the safety, the dignity of the nation over which he
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 1 53
presided were nothing to him. He had begun to find con-
stitutional restraints galling. Already had been formed in the
Parliament a strong connection known by the name of the
Country Party. That party included all the public men who
leaned towards Puritanism and Republicanism, and many who,
though attached to the Church and to hereditary monarchy,
had been driven into opposition by dread of Popery, by dread
of France, and by disgust at the extravagance, dissoluteness,
and faithlessness of the court. The power of this band of
politicians was constantly growing. Every year some of those
members who had been returned to Parliament during the
loyal excitement of 1661 dropped off; and the vacant seats
were generally filled by persons less tractable. Charles did
not think himself a King while an assembly of subjects could
call for his accounts before paying his debts, and could insist
on knowing which of his mistresses or boon companions had
intercepted the money destined for the equipping and manning
of the fleet. Though not very studious of fame, he was galled
by the taunts which were sometimes uttered in the discussions
of the Commons, and on one occasion attempted to restrain
the freedom of speech by disgraceful means. Sir John
Coventry, a country gentleman, had, in debate, sneered at
the profligacy of the court. In any former reign he would
probably have been called before the Privy Council and
committed to the Tower. A different course was now taken.
A gang of bullies was secretly sent to slit the nose of the
offender. This ignoble revenge, instead of quelling the
spirit of opposition, raised such a tempest that the King was
compelled to submit to the cruel humihation of passing an
act which attainted the instruments of his revenge, and which
took from him the power of pardoning them.
But, impatient as he was of constitutional restraints, how
was he to emancipate himself from them? He could make
himself despotic only by the help of a great standing army ;
and such an army was not in existence. His revenues did
indeed enable him to keep up some regular troops : but these
troops, though numerous enough to excite great jealousy and
apprehension in the House of Commons and in the country,
were scarcely numerous enough to protect Whitehall and the
Tower against a rising of the mob of London. Such risings
were, indeed, to be dreaded ; for it was calculated that in the
capital and its suburbs dwelt not less than twenty thousand of
Oliver's old soldiers.
Since the King was bent on emancipating himself from the
Ij;4 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
control of Parliament, and since, in such an enterprise, he
could not hope for effectual aid at home, it followed that he
must look for aid abroad. The power and wealth of the King
of France might be equal to the arduous task of establishing
absolute monarchy in England. Such an ally would undoubt-
edly expect substantial proofs of gratitude for such a service.
Charles must descend to the rank of a great vassal, and must
make peace and war according to the directions of the
government which protected him. His relation to Lewis
would closely resemble that in which the Rajah of Nagpore
and the King of Oude now stand to the British government.
Those princes are bound to aid the East India Company in all
hostilities, defensive and offensive, and to have no diplomatic
relations but such as the East India Company shall sanction.
The Company in return guarantees them against insurrection.
As long as they faithfully discharge their obligations to the
paramount power, they are permitted to dispose of large
revenues, to fill their palaces with beautiful women, to besot
themselves in the company of their favourite revellers, and to
oppress with impunity any subject who may incur their dis-
pleasure. Such a life would be insupportable to a man of
high spirit and of powerful understanding. But to Charles,
sensual, indolent, unequal to any strong intellectual exertion,
and destitute alike of all patriotism and of all sense of personal
dignity, the prospect had nothing unpleasing.
That the Duke of York should have concurred in the
design of degrading that crown which it was probable that he
would himself one day wear may seem more extraordinary.
For his nature was haughty and imperious ; and, indeed, he
continued to the very last to show, by occasional starts and
struggles, his impatience of the French yoke. But he was
almost as much debased by superstition as his brother by
indolence and vice. James was now a Roman Catholic.
Religious bigotry had become the dominant sentiment of his
narrow and stubborn mind, and had so mingled itself with his
love of rule, that the two passions could hardly be distinguished
from each other. It seemed highly improbable that, without
foreign aid, he would be able to obtain ascendency or even
toleration for his own faith : and he was in a temper to see
nothing humiliating in any step which might promote the
interests of the true Church.
A negotiation was opened which lasted during several
months. The chief agent between the English and French
courts was the beautiful, graceful, and intelligent Henrietta,
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 1 55
Duchess of Orleans, sister of Charles, sister in law of Lewis,
and a favourite with both. The King of England offered to
declare himself a Roman Catholic, to dissolve the Triple
Alliance, and to join with France against Holland, if France
would engage to lend him such military and pecuniary aid as
might make him independent of his Parliament. Lewis at
first affected to receive these propositions coolly, and at length
agreed to them with the air of a man who is conferring a great
favour : but in truth, the course which he had resolved to take
was one by which he might gain and could not lose.
It seems certain that he never seriously thought of establish-
ing despotism and Popery in England by force of arms. He
must have been aware that such an enterprise would be in the
highest degree arduous and hazardous, that it would task to
the utmost all the energies of France during many years, and
that it would be altogether incompatible with more promising
schemes of aggrandisement, which were dear to his heart. He
would indeed willingly have acquired the merit and the glory
of doing a great service on reasonable terms to the Church of
which he was a member. But he was little disposed to
imitate his ancestors who, in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries, had led the flower of French chivalry to die in
Syria and Egypt ; and he well knew that a crusade against
Protestantism in Great Britain would not be less perilous than
the expeditions in which the armies of Lewis the Seventh and
of Lewis the Ninth had perished. He had no motive for
wishing the Stuarts to be absolute. He did not regard the
English constitution with feelings at all resembling those which
have in later times induced princes to make war on the free
institutions of neighbouring nations. At present a great party
zealous for popular government has ramifications in every
civilised country. Any important advantage gained anywhere
by that party is almost certain to be the signal for general
commotion. It is not wonderful that governments threatened
by a common danger should combine for the purpose of
mutual insurance. But in the seventeenth century no such
danger existed. Between the public mind of England and the
public mind of France, there was a great gulph. Our institu-
tions and our factions were as little understood at Paris as at
Constantinople. It may be doubted whether any one of the
forty members of the French Academy had an English volume
in his library, or knew Shakspeare, Jonson, or Spenser, even
by name. A few Huguenots, who had inherited the mutinous
spirit of their ancestors, might perhaps have a fellow feeling
1^6 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
with their brethren in the faith, the Enghsh Roundheads : but
the Huguenots had ceased to be formidable. The French, as
a body, attached to the Church of Rome, and proud of the
greatness of their King and of their own loyalty, looked on our
struggles against Popery and arbitrary power, not only without
admiration or sympathy, but with strong disapprobation and
disgust. It would therefore be a great error to ascribe the
conduct of Lewis to apprehensions at all resembling those
which, in our age, induced the Holy Alliance to interfere in
the internal troubles of Naples and Spain.
Nevertheless, the propositions made by the court of Whitehall
were most welcome to him. He already meditated gigantic
designs, which were destined to keep Europe in constant
fermentation during more than forty years. He wished to
humble the United Provinces, and to annex Belgium, Franche
Comtd, and Loraine to his dominions. Nor was this all. The
King of Spain was a sickly child. It was likely that he would
die: without issue. His eldest sister was Queen of France.
A day would almost certainly come, and might come very
soon, when the House of Bourbon might lay claim to that
vast empire on which the sun never set. The union of
two great monarchies under one head would doubtless be
opposed by a continental coalition. But for any continental
coalition France single handed was a match. England could
turn the scale. On the course which, in such a crisis, England
might pursue, the destinies of the world would depend ; and it
was notorious that the English Parliament and nation were
strongly attached to the policy which had dictated the Triple
Alliance. Nothing, therefore, could be more gratifying to
Lewis than to learn that the princes of the House of Stuart
needed his help, and were willing to purchase that help by
unbounded subserviency. He determined to profit by the
opportunity, and laid down for himself a plan to which, without
deviation, he adhered, till the Revolution of 1688 disconcerted
all his politics. He professed himself desirous to promote the
designs of the English court. He promised large aid. He
from time to tmie doled out such aid as might serve to keep
hope alive, and as he could without risk or inconvenience
spare. In this way, at an expense very much less than that
which he incurred in building and decorating Versailles or
Marli, he succeeded in making England, during nearly twenty
years, almost as insignificant a member of the political system
of Europe as the republic of San Marino.
His object was not to destroy our constitution, but to keep
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND I 57
the various elements of which it was composed in a perpetual
state of conflict, and to set irreconcilable enmity between those
who had the power of the purse and those who had the power
of the sword. With this view he bribed and stimulated both
parties in turn, pensioned at once the ministers of the crown
and the chiefs of the opposition, encouraged the court to with-
stand the seditious encroachments of the Parliament, and
conveyed to the Parliament intimations of the arbitrary designs
of the court.
One of the devices to which he resorted for the purpose of
obtaining an ascendency in the English counsels deserves
especial notice. Charles, though incapable of love in the
highest sense of the word, was the slave of any woman whose
person excited his desires, and whose airs and prattle amused
his leisure. Indeed a husband would be justly derided
who should bear from a wife of exalted rank and spotless virtue
half the insolence which the King of England bore from con-
cubines who, while they owed everything to his bounty, caressed
his courtiers almost before his face. He had patiently endured
the termagant passions of Barbara Palmer and the pert vivacity
of Eleanor Gwynn. Lewis thought that the most useful envoy
who could be sent to London, would be a handsome, licentious,
and crafty Frenchwoman. Such a woman was Louisa, a lady
of the House of Querouaille, whom our rude ancestors called
Madam Carwell. She was soon triumphant over all her rivals,
was created Duchess of Portsmouth, was loaded with wealth,
and obtained a dominion which ended only with the life of
Charles.
The most important conditions of the alliance between the
crowns were digested into a secret treaty which was signed at
Dover in May 1670, just ten years after the day on which
Charles had landed at that very port amidst the acclamations
and joyful tears of a too confiding people.
By this treaty Charles bound himself to make public
profession of the Roman Catholic religion, to join his arms to
those of Lewis for the purpose of destroying the power of the
United Provinces, and to employ the whole strength of
England, by land and sea, in support of the rights of the
House of Bourbon to the vast monarchy of Spain. Lewis, on
the otlier hand, engaged to pay a large subsidy, and promised
that, if any insurrection should break out in England, he would
send an army at his own charge to support his ally.
This compact was made with gloomy auspices. Six weeks
after it had been signed and sealed, the charming princess,
1^8 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
whose influence over her brother and brother in law liad been
so pernicious to her country, was no more. Her death gave
rise to horrible suspicions which, for a moment, seemed likely
to interrupt the newly formed friendship between the Houses
of Stuart and Bourbon : but in a short time fresh assurances
of undiminished good will were exchanged between the
confederates.
The Duke of York, too dull to apprehend danger, or too
fanatical to care about it, was impatient to see the article
touching the Roman Catholic religion carried into immediate
execution : but Lewis had the wisdom to perceive that, if this
course were taken, there would be such an explosion in
England as would probably frustrate those parts of the plan
which he had most at heart. It was therefore determined that
Charles should still call himself a Protestant, and should still,
at high festivals, receive the sacrament according to the ritual
of the Church of England. His more scrupulous brother
ceased to appear in the royal chapel.
About this time died the Duchess of York, daughter of the
banished Earl of Clarendon. She had been, during some
years, a concealed Roman Catholic. She left two daughters,
Mary and Anne, afterwards successively Queens of Great
Britain. They were bred Protestants by the positive command
of the King, who knew that it would be vain for him to profess
himself a member of the Church of England, if children who
seemed likely to inherit his throne were, by his permission,
brought up as members of the Church of Rome.
The principal servants of the crown at this time were men
whose names have justly acquired an unenviable notoriety.
We must take heed, however, that we do not load their
memory with infamy which of right belongs to their master
For the treaty of Dover the King himself is chiefly answerable.
He held conferences on it with the French agents : he wrote
many letters concerning it with his own hand : he was the
person who first suggested the most disgraceful articles which
it contained ; and he carefully concealed some of those articles
from the majority of his Cabinet.
Few things in our history are more curious than the origin
and growth of the power now possessed by the Cabinet. From
an early period the Kings of England had been assisted by a
Privy Council to which the law assigned many important
functions and duties. During several centuries this body
deliberated on the gravest and most delicate affairs. But by
degrees its character changed. It became too large for despatch
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND I 59
and secrecy. The rank of Privy Councillor was often bestowed
as an honorary distinction on persons to whom nothing was
confided, and whose opinion was never asked. The sovereign,
on the most important occasions, resorted for advice to
a small knot of leading ministers. The advantages and
disadvantages of this course were early pointed out by Bacon,
with his usual judgment and sagacity : but it was not
till after the Restoration that the interior council began
to attract general notice. During many years old fashioned
politicians continued to regard the Cabinet as an unconsti-
tutional and dangerous board. Nevertheless, it constantly
became more and more important. It at length drew to itself
the chief executive power, and has now been regarded, during
several generations, as an essential part of our polity. Yet,
strange to say, it still continues to be altogether unknown to
the law. The names of the noblemen and gentlemen who
compose it are never officially announced to the public. No
record is kept of its meetings and resolutions ; nor has its
existence ever been recognised by any Act of Parliament.
During some years the word Cabal was popularly used as
synonymous with Cabinet. But it happened by a whimsical
coincidence that, in 1671, the Cabinet consisted of five persons
the initial letters of whose names made up the word Cabal,
Clifford, Arlington, Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale.
These ministers were therefore emphatically called the Cabal ;
and they soon made that appellation so infamous that it has
never since their time been used except as a term of reproach.
Sir Thomas Clifford was a Commissioner of the Treasury,
and had greatly distinguished himself in the House of
Commons. Of the members of the Cabal he was the most
respectable. For, with a fiery and imperious temper, he had a
strong though a lamentably perverted sense of duty and
honour.
Henry Bennet, Lord Arlington, then Secretary of State, had,
since he came to manhood, resided principally on the Con-
tinent, and had learned that cosmopolitan indifference to
constitutions and religions which is often observable in persons
whose life has been passed in vagrant diplomacy. If there
was any form of government which he liked, it was that of
France. If there was any Church for which he felt a prefer-
ence, it was that of Rome. He had some talent for conversa-
tion, and some talent also for transacting the ordinary business
of office. He had learned, during a life passed in travelling
and negotiating, the art of accommodating his language and
*F34
l60 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
deportment to the society in which he found himself. His
vivacity in the closet amused the King : his gravity in debates
and conferences imposed on the pubhc : and he had succeeded
in attaching to himself, partly by services and partly by hopes,
a considerable number of personal retainers.
Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale, were men in whom
the immorality which was epidemic among the politicians of
that age appeared in its most malignant type, but variously
modified by great diversities of temper and understanding.
Buckingham was a sated man of pleasure, who had turned to
ambition as to a pastime. As he had tried to amuse himself
with architecture and music, with writing farces and with seeking
for the philosopher's stone, so he now tried to amuse himself
with a secret negotiation and a Dutch war. He had already,
rather from fickleness and love of novelty than from any
deep design, been faithless to every party. At one time
he had ranked among the Cavaliers. At another time
warrants had been out against him for maintaining a treason-
able correspondence with the remains of the Republican party
in the city. He was now again a courtier, and was eager to
win the favour of the King by services from which the most
illustrious of those who had fought and suffered for the royal
house would have recoiled with horror.
Ashley, with a far stronger head, and with a far fiercer and
more earnest ambition, had been equally versatile. But
Ashley's versatility was the effect, not of levit}', but of deUberate
selfishness. He had served and betrayed a succession of
governments. But he had timed all his treacheries so well
that, through all revolutions, his fortunes had constantly been
rising. The multitude, struck with admiration by a prosperity
which, while everything else was constantly changing, remained
unchangeable, attributed to him a prescience almost miraculous,
and likened him to the Hebrew statesman of whom it is written
that his counsel was as if a man had inquired of the oracle of
God.
Lauderdale, loud and coarse both in mirth and anger, was
perhaps, under the outward show of boisterous frankness, the
most dishonest man in the whole Cabal. He had been con-
spicuous among the Scotch insurgents of 1638, and zealous for
the Covenant. He was accused of having been deeply con-
cerned in the sale of Charles the First to the English
Parliament, and was therefore, in the estimation of good
Cavaliers, a traitor, if possible, of a worse description than
those who had sate in the High Court of Justice. He often
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND l6l
talked with noisy jocularity of the days when he was a canter
and a rebel. He was now the chief instrument employed by
the court in the work of forcing episcopacy on his reluctant
countrymen ; nor did he in that cause shrink from the unspar-
ing use of the sword, the halter, and the boot. Yet those who
knew him knew that thirty years had made no change in his
real sentiments, that he still hated the memory of Charles
the First, and that he still preferred the Presbyterian form of
church government to every other.
Unscrupulous as Buckingham, Ashley, and Lauderdale were,
it was not thought safe to entrust to them the King's intention
of declaring himself a Roman Catholic. A false treaty, in
which the article concerning religion was omitted, was shown
to them. The names and seals of Clifford and Arlington are
affixed to the genuine treaty. Both these statesmen had a
partiality for the old Church, a partiality which the brave and
vehement Clifford in no long time manfully avowed, but which
the colder and meaner Arlington concealed, till the near
approach of death scared him into sincerity. The three other
cabinet ministers, however, were not men to be easily kept in
the dark, and probably suspected more than was distinctly
avowed to them. They were certainly privy to all the political
engagements contracted with France, and were not ashamed to
receive large gratifications from Lewis.
The first object of Charles was to obtain from the Commons
supplies which might be employed in executing the secret
treaty. The Cabal, holding power at a time when our govern-
ment was in a state of transition, united in itself two different
kinds of vices belonging to two different ages and to two
different systems. As those five evil counsellors were among
the last English statesmen who seriously thought of destroying
the Parliament, so they were the first English statesmen who
attempted extensively to corrupt it. We find in their policy at
once the latest trace of the Thorough of Strafford, and the
earliest trace of that methodical bribery which was afterwards
practised by Walpole. They soon perceived, however, that,
though the House of Commons was chiefly composed of Cava-
liers, and though places and French gold had been lavished on
the members, there was no chance that even the least odious
parts of the scheme arranged at Dover would be supported by
a majority. It was necessary to have recourse to fraud. The
King accordingly professed great zeal for the principles of the
Triple Alliance, and pretended that, in order to hold the
ambition of France in check, it would be necessary to augment
1 62 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
the fleet. The Commons fell into the snare, and voted a grant
of eight hundred thousand pounds. The Parliament was
instantly prorogued ; and the court, thus emancipated from
control, proceeded to the execution of the great design.
The financial difficulties were serious. A war with Holland
could be carried on only at enormous cost. The ordinary
revenue was not more than sufficient to support the government
in time of peace. The eight hundred thousand pounds out of
which the Commons had just been tricked would not defray
the naval and military charge of a single year of hostilities.
After the terrible lesson given by the Long Parliament, even
the Cabal did not venture to recommend benevolences or
shipmoney. In this perplexity Ashley and CHfford proposed
a flagitious breach of public faith. The goldsmiths of London
were then not only dealers in the precious metals, but also
bankers, and were in the habit of advancing large sums of money
to the government. In return for these advances they received
assignments on the revenue, and were repaid with interest as
the taxes came in. About thirteen hundred thousand pounds
had been in this way entrusted to the honour of the state. On
a sudden it was announced that it was not convenient to pay
the principal, and that the lenders must content themselves
with interest. They were consequently unable to meet their
own engagements. The Exchange was in an uproar : several
great mercantile houses broke ; and dismay and distress spread
through all society. Meanwhile rapid strides were made
towards despotism. Proclamations, dispensing with Acts of
Parliament or enjoining what only Parliament could lawfully
enjoin, appeared in rapid succession. Of these edicts the most
important was the Declaration of Indulgence. By this instru-
ment the penal laws against Roman Catholics were set aside ;
and, that the real object of the measure might not be
perceived, the laws against Protestant Nonconformists were
also suspended.
A few days after the appearance of the Declaration of Indul-
gence, war was proclaimed against the United Provinces. By
sea the Dutch maintained the struggle with honour ; but on
land they were at first borne down by irresistible force. A
great French army passed the Rhine. Fortress after fortress
opened its gates. Three of the seven provinces of the federa-
tion were occupied by the invaders. The fires of the hostile
camp were seen from the top of the Stadthouse of Amsterdam.
The Republic, thus fiercely assailed from without, was torn at
the same time by internal dissensions. The government was
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 1 63
in the hands of a close oligarchy of powerful burghers. There
were numerous selfelected town councils, each of which
exercised, within its own sphere, many of the rights of
sovereignty. These councils sent delegates to the Provincial
States, and the Provincial States again sent delegates to the
States General. A hereditary first magistrate was no essential
part of this polity. Nevertheless one family, singularly fertile
of great men, had gradually obtained a large and somewhat
indefinite authority. William, first of the name. Prince of
Orange Nassau, and Stadtholder of Holland, had headed the
memorable insurrection against Spain. His son Maurice had
been Captain General and first minister of the States, had, by
eminent abilities and public services, and by some treacherous
and cruel actions, raised himself to almost kingly power, and
had bequeathed a great part of that power to his family. The
influence of the Stadtholders was an object of extreme jealousy
to the municipal oligarchy. But the army, and that great body
of citizens which was excluded from all share in the govern-
ment, looked on the Burgomasters and Deputies with a dislike
resembling the dislike with which the legions and the common
people of Rome regarded the Senate, and were as zealous for
the House of Orange as the legions and the common people
of Rome for the House of Caesar. The Stadtholder com-
manded the forces of the commonwealth, disposed of all
military commands, had a large share of the civil patronage,
and was surrounded by pomp almost regal.
Prince WiUiam the Second had been strongly opposed by the
oligarchical party. His life had terminated in the year 1650,
amidst great civil troubles. He died childless : the adherents
of his house were left for a short time without a head ; and the
powers which he had exercised were divided among the town
councils, the Provincial States, and the States General.
But, a few days after William's death, his widow, Mary,
daughter of Charles the First, King of Great Britain, gave birth
to a son, destined to raise the glory and authority of the House
of Nassau to the highest point, to save the United Provinces
from slavery, to curb the power of France, and to establish the
English constitution on a lasting foundation.
This Prince, named William Henry, was from his birth an
object of serious apprehension to the party now supreme in
Holland, and of loyal attachment to the old friends of his line.
He enjoyed high consideration as the possessor of a splendid
fortune, as the chief of one of the most illustrious houses in
Europe, as a sovereign prince of the German empire, as a prince of
164 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
the blood royal of England, and, above all, as the descendant of
the founders of Batavian liberty. But the high office which had
once been considered as hereditary in his family, remained in
abeyance ; and the intention of the aristocratical party was that
there should never be another Stadtholder. The want of a first
magistrate was, to a great extent, supplied by the Grand Pen-
sionary of the Province of Holland, John de Witt, whose
abilities, firmness, and integrity had raised him to unrivalled
authority in the counsels of the municipal oligarchy.
The French invasion produced a complete change. The
suffering and terrified people raged fiercely against the govern-
ment. In their madness they attacked the bravest captains and
the ablest statesmen of the distressed commonwealth. De
Ruyter was insulted by the rabble. De Witt was torn in
pieces before the gate of the palace of the States General at
the Hague. The Prince of Orange, who had no share in the
guilt of the murder, but who, on this occasion, as on another
lamentable occasion twenty years later, extended to crimes per-
petrated in his cause an indulgence which has left a stain on his
glory, became chief of the government without a rival. Young
as he was, his ardent and unconquerable spirit, though disguised
by a cold and sullen manner, soon roused the courage of his
dismayed countrymen. It was in vain that both his uncle and
the French King attempted by splendid offers to seduce him
from the cause of the republic. To the States General he
spoke a high and inspiriting language. He even ventured to
suggest a scheme which has an aspect of antique heroism, and
which, if it had been accomplished, would have been the
noblest subject for epic song that is to be found in the whole
compass of modern history. He told the deputies that, even
if their natal soil and the marvels with which human industry
had covered it were buried under the ocean, all was not lost.
The Hollanders might survive Holland. Liberty and pure
religion, driven by tyrants and bigots from Europe, might take
refuge in^ the farthest isles of Asia. The shipping in the ports
of the republic would suffice to carry two hundred thousand
emigrants to the Indian Archipelago. There the Dutch com-
monwealth might commence a new and more glorious existence,
and might rear, under the Southern Cross, amidst the sugar
canes and nutmeg trees, the Exchange of a wealthier Amsterdam,
and the schools of a more learned Leyden. The national
spirit swelled and rose high. The terms offered by the allies
were firmly rejected. The dykes were opened. The whole
country was one great lake, from which the cities, with their
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 1 65
ramparts and steeples, rose like islands. The invaders were
forced to save themselves from destruction by a precipitate re-
treat. Lewis, who, though he sometimes thought it necessary
to appear at the head of his troops, greatly preferred a palace
to a camp, had already returned to enjoy the adulation of
poets and the smiles of ladies in the newly planted alleys of
Versailles.
And now the tide turned fast. The event of the maritime
war had been doubtful : by land the United Provinces had
obtained a respite ; and a respite, though short, was of infinite
importance. Alarmed by the vast designs of Lewis, both the
branches of the great House of Austria sprang to arms.
Spain and Holland, divided by the memory of ancient wrongs
and humiliations, were reconciled by the nearness of the
common danger. From every part of Germany troops poured
towards the Rhine. The English government had already ex-
pended all the funds which had been obtained by pillaging the
public creditor. No loan could be expected from the City.
An attempt to raise taxes by the royal authority would have at
once produced a rebellion ; and Lewis, who had now to main-
tain a contest against half Europe, was in no condition to
farnish the means of coercing the people of England. It was
necessary to convoke the Parliament.
In the spring of 1673, therefore, the Houses reassembled
after a recess of near two years. Clifford, now a peer and
Lord Treasurer, and Ashley, now Earl of Shaftesbury and
Lord Chancellor, were the persons on whom the King chiefly
relied as Parliamentary managers. The Country Party
instantly began to attack the policy of the Cabal. The attack
was made, not in the way of storm, but by slow and scientific
approaches. The Commons at first held out hopes that they
would give support to the King's foreign policy, but insisted
that he should purchase that support by abandoning his whole
system of domestic policy. Their first object was to obtain
the revocation of the Declaration of Indulgence. Of all the
many unpopular steps taken by the government the most un-
popular was the publishing of this Declaration. The most
opposite sentiments had been shocked by an act so liberal,
done in a manner so despotic. All the enemies of religious
freedom, and all the friends of civil freedom, found themselves
on the same side ; and these two classes made up nineteen
twentieths of the nation. The zealous Churchman exclaimed
against the favour which had been shown both to the Papist
and to the Puritan. The Puritan, though he might rejoice in
1 66 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
the suspension of the persecution by which he had been
harassed, felt little gratitude for a toleration which he was
to share with Antichrist. And all Englishmen who valued
liberty and law, saw^ with uneasiness the deep inroad which
the prerogative had made into the province of the legislature.
It must in candour be admitted that the constitutional
question was then not quite free from obscurity. Our ancient
Kings had undoubtedly claimed and exercised the right of
suspending the operation of penal laws. The tribunals had
recognised that right. Parliaments had suffered it to pass
unchallenged. That some such right was inherent in the
crown, few even of the Country Party ventured, in the face of
precedent and authority, to deny. Yet it was clear that, if this
prerogative were without limit, the English government could
scarcely be distinguished from a pure despotism. That there
was a limit was fully admitted by the King and his ministers.
Whether the Declaration of Indulgence lay within or without
the limit was the question ; and neither party could succeed in
tracing any line which would bear examination. Some oppo-
nents of the government complained that the Declaration
suspended not less than forty statutes. But why not forty as
well as one ? There was an orator who gave it as his opinion
that the King might constitutionally dispense with bad laws, but
not with good laws. The absurdity of such a distinction it is
needless to expose. The doctrine which seems to have been
generally received in the House of Commons was, that the
dispensing power was confined to secular matters, and did not
extend to laws enacted for the security of the established
religion. Yet, as the King was supreme head of the Church,
it should seem that, if he possessed the dispensing power at
all, he might well possess that power where the Church was
concerned. When the courtiers on the other side attempted
to point out the bounds of this prerogative, they were not more
successful than the opposition had been.*
The truth is that the dispensing power was a great anomaly
in politics. It was utterly inconsistent in theory with the
principles of mixed government : but it had grown up in times
when people troubled themselves little about theories. It had
not been very grossly abused in practice. It had therefore
been tolerated, and had gradually acquired a kind of prescrip-
tion. At length it was employed, after a long interval, in an
* The most sensible thing said in the House of Commons, on this
subject, came from Sir WilHam Coventry : — " Our ancestors never did
draw a line to circumscribe prerogative and liberty."
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 1 67
enlightened age, and at an important conjuncture, to an extent
never before known, and for a purpose generally abhorred. It
was instantly subjected to a severe scrutiny. Men did not,
indeed, at first, venture to pronounce it altogether unconstitu-
tional. But they began to perceive that it was at direct
variance with the spirit of the constitution, and would, if left
unchecked, turn the English government from a limited into an
absolute monarchy.
Under the influence of such apprehensions, the Commons
denied the King's right to dispense, not indeed with all penal
statutes, but with penal statutes in matters ecclesiastical, and
gave him plainly to understand that, unless he renounced that
right, they would grant no supply for the Dutch war. He, for
a moment, showed some inclination to put everything to
hazard : but he was strongly advised by Lewis to submit to
necessity, and to wait for better times, when the French armies,
now employed in an arduous struggle on the continent, might
be available for the purpose of suppressing discontent in
England. In the Cabal itself the signs of disunion and
treachery began to appear. Shaftesbury, with his proverbial
sagacity, saw that a violent reaction was at hand, and that all
things were tending towards a crisis resembling that of 1 640.
He was determined that such a crisis should not find him in
the situation of Strafford. He therefore turned suddenly
round, and acknowledged, in the House of Lords, that the
Declaration was illegal. The King, thus deserted by his ally
and by his Chancellor, yielded, cancelled the Declaration, and
solemnly promised that it should never be drawn into
precedent.
Even this concession was insufficient. The Commons, not
content with having forced their sovereign to annul the Indul-
gence, next extorted his unwilling consent to a celebrated law,
which continued in force down to the reign of George the
Fourth. This law, known as the Test Act, provided that all
persons holding any office, civil or military, should take the
oath of supremacy, should subscribe a declaration against
transubstantiation, and should publicly receive the sacrament
according to the rites of the Church of England. The pre-
amble expressed hostility only to the Papists : but the enacting
clauses were scarcely more unfavourable to the Papists than to
the most rigid class of Puritans. The Puritans, however,
terrified at the evident leaning of the court towards Popery,
and encouraged by some churchmen to hope that, as soon as
the Roman Catholics should have been effectually disarmed,
1 68 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
relief would be extended to Protestant Nonconformists, made
little opposition ; nor could the King, who was in extreme want
of money, venture to withhold his assent. The act was passed ;
and the Duke of York was consequently under the necessity
of resigning the great place of Lord High Admiral.
Hitherto the Commons had not declared against the Dutch
war. But, when the King had, in return for money cautiously
doled out, relinquished his whole plan of domestic policy, they
fell impetuously on his foreign policy. They requested him to
dismiss Buckingham and Lauderdale from his councils for ever,
and appointed a committee to consider the propriety of im-
peaching Arlington. In a short time the Cabal was no more.
Clifford, who, alone of the five, had any claim to be regarded
as an honest man, refused to take the new test, laid down his
white staff, and retired to his country seat. Arlington quitted
the post of Secretary of State for a quiet and dignified employ-
ment in the royal household. Shaftesbury and Buckingham
made their peace with the opposition, and appeared at the
head of the stormy democracy of the city. Lauderdale, how-
ever, still continued to be minister for Scotch affairs, with
which the English Parliament could not interfere.
And now the Commons urged the King to make peace with
Holland, and expressly declared that no more supplies should
be granted for the war, unless it should appear that the enemy
obstinately refused to consent to reasonable terms. Charles
found it necessary to postpone to a more convenient season all
thought of executing the treaty of Dover, and to cajole the
nation by pretending to return to the policy of the Triple
Alliance. Temple, who, during the ascendency of the Cabal,
had lived in seclusion among his books and flower beds, was
called forth from his hermitage. By his instrumentality a
separate peace was concluded with the United Provinces ; and
he again became ambassador at the Hague, where his presence
was regarded as a sure pledge for the sincerity of his court.
The chief direction of affairs was now entrusted to Sir
Thomas Osborn, a Yorkshire baronet, who had, in the House
of Commons, shown eminent talents for business and debate.
Osborn became Lord Treasurer, and was soon created Earl
of Danby. He was not a man whose character, if tried by
any high standard of morality, would appear to merit appro-
bation. He was greedy of wealth and honours, corrupt him-
self, and a corrupter of others. The Cabal had bequeathed to
him the art of bribing Parliaments, an art still rude, and giving
little promise of the rare perfection to which it was brought in
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 1 69
the following century. He improved greatly on the plan of the
first inventors. They had merely purchased orators : but
every man who had a vote, might sell himself to Danby. Yet
the new minister must not be confounded with the negotiators
of Dover. He was not without the feelings of an Englishman
and a Protestant ; nor did he, in his solicitude for his own
interests, ever wholly forget the interests of his country and of
his religion. He was desirous, indeed, to exalt the prerogative :
but the means by which he proposed to exalt it were widely
different from those which had been contemplated by Arlington
and Clifford. The thought of establishing arbitrary power, by
calling in the aid of foreign arms, and by reducing the kingdom
to the rank of a dependent principality, never entered into his
mind. His plan was to rally round the monarchy those classes
which had been the firm allies of the monarchy during the
troubles of the preceding generation, and which had been
disgusted by the recent crimes and errors of the court. With
the help of the old Cavalier interest, of the nobles, of the
country gentlemen, of the clergy, and of the Universities, it
might, he conceived, be possible to make Charles, not indeed
an absolute sovereign, but a sovereign scarcely less powerful
than Elizabeth had been.
Prompted by these feelings, Danby formed the design of
securing to the Cavalier party the exclusive possession of all
political power, both executive and legislative. In the year
1675, accordingly, a bill was offered to the Lords which
provided that no person should hold any office, or should sit in
either House of Parliament, without first declaring on oath that
he considered resistance to the kingly power as in all cases
criminal, and that he would never endeavour to alter the
government either in Church or State. During several weeks
the debates, divisions, and protests caused by this proposition
kept the country in a state of excitement. The opposition in
the House of Lords, headed by two members of the Cabal who
were desirous to make their peace with the nation, Buckingham
and Shaftesbury, was beyond all precedent vehement and
pertinacious, and at length proved successful. The bill was not
indeed rejected, but was retarded, mutilated, and at length
suffered to drop.
So arbitrary and so exclusive was Danby's scheme of domestic
policy. His opinions touching foreign policy did him more
honour. They were in truth directly opposed to those of the
Cabal, and differed little from those of the Country Party. He
bitterly lamented the degraded situation to which England was
lyO HISTORY OF ENGLAND
reduced, and declared, with more energy than politeness, that
his dearest wish was to cudgel the French into a proper respect
for her. So little did he disguise his feelings, that, at a great
banquet where the most illustrious dignitaries of the State and
of the Church were assembled, he not very decorously filled his
glass to the confusion of all who were against a war with France.
He would indeed most gladly have seen his country united
with the powers which were then combined against Lewis, and
was for that end bent on placing Temple, the author of the
Triple Alliance, at the head of the department which directed
foreign affairs. But the power of the prime minister was limited.
In his most confidential letters he complained that the infatua-
tion of his master prevented England from taking her proper
place among European nations. Charles was insatiably greedy
of French gold : he had by no means relinquished the hope
that he might, at some future day, be able to establish absolute
monarchy by the help of the French arms ; and for both reasons
he wished to maintain a good understanding with the Court of
Versailles.
Thus the sovereign leaned towards one system of foreign
politics, and the minister towards a system diametrically
opposite. Neither the sovereign nor the minister, indeed, was
of a temper to pursue any object with undeviating constancy.
Each occasionally yielded to the importunity of the other ; and
their jarring inclinations and mutual concessions gave to the
whole administration a strangely capricious character. Charles
sometimes, from levity and indolence, suffered Danby to take
steps which Lewis resented as mortal injuries. Danby, on the
other hand, rather than relinquish his great place, sometimes
stooped to compliances which caused him bitter pain and
shame. The King was brought to consent to a marriage
between the Lady Mary, eldest daughter and presumptive
heiress of the Duke of York, and William of Orange, the deadly
enemy of France, and the hereditary champion of the Reforma-
tion. Nay, the brave Earl of Ossory, son of Ormond, was sent
to assist the Dutch with some British troops, who, on the most
bloody day of the whole war, signally vindicated the national
reputation for stubborn courage. The Treasurer, on the other
hand, was induced, not only to connive at some scandalous
pecuniary transactions which took place between his master
and the court of Versailles, but to become, unwillingly indeed
and ungraciously, an agent in those transactions.
Meanwhile, the Country Party was driven by two strong
feelings in two opposite directions. The popular leaders were
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND I7I
afraid of the greatness of Lewis, who was not only making head
against the whole strength of the continental alliance, but was
even gaining ground. Yet they were afraid to entrust their own
King with the means of curbing France, lest those means should
be used to destroy the liberties of England. The conflict
between these apprehensions, both of which were perfectly
legitimate, made the policy of the Opposition seem as eccentric
and fickle as that of the Court. The Commons called for a
war with France, till the King, pressed by Danby to comply
with their wish, seemed disposed to yield, and began to raise
an army. But, as soon as they saw that the recruiting had
commenced, their dread of Lewis gave place to a nearer dread.
They began to fear that the new levies might be employed on
a service in which Charles took much more interest than in the
defence of Flanders. They therefore refused supplies, and
clamoured for disbanding as loudly as they had just before
clamoured for arming. Those historians who have severely
reprehended this inconsistency do not appear to have made
sufficient allowance for the embarrassing situation of subjects
who have reason to believe that their prince is conspiring with
a foreign and hostile power against their liberties. To refuse
him military resources is to leave the state defenceless. Yet
to give him military resources may be only to arm him against
the state. In such circumstances vacillation cannot be
considered as a proof of dishonesty or even of weakness.
These jealousies were studiously fomented by the French
King. He had long kept England passive by promising to
support the throne against the Parliament. He now, alarmed
at finding that the patriotic counsels of Danby seemed likely
to prevail in the closet, began to inflame the Parliament against
the throne. Between Lewis and the Country Party there was
one thing, and one only, in common, profound distrust of
Charles. Could the Country Party have been certain that
their sovereign meant only to make war on France, they would
have been eager to support him. Could Lewis have been
certain that the new levies were intended only to make war on
the constitution of England, he would have made no attempt
to stop them. But the unsteadiness and faithlessness of
Charles were such that the French government and the English
opposition, agreeing in nothing else, agreed in disbelieving his
protestations, and were equally desirous to keep him poor and
without an army. Communications were opened between
Barillon, the Ambassador of Lewis, and those English
politicians who had always professed, and who indeed sincerely
172 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
felt, the greatest dread and dislike of the French ascendency.
The most upright member of the Country Party, William Lord
Russell, son of the Earl of Bedford, did not scruple to concert
with a foreign mission schemes for embarrassing his own
sovereign. This was the whole extent of Russell's offence. His
principles and his fortune alike raised him above all temptations
of a sordid kind : but there is too much reason to believe that
some of his associates were less scrupulous. It would be
unjust to impute to them the extreme wickedness of taking
bribes to injure their country. On the contrary, they meant to
serve her : but it is impossible to deny that they were mean and
indelicate enough to let a foreign prince pay them for serving
her. Among those who cannot be acquitted of this degrading
charge was one man who is popularly considered as the
personification of public spirit, and who, in spite of some great
moral and intellectual faults, has a just claim to be called a
hero, a philosopher, and a patriot. It is impossible to see
without pain such a name in the list of the pensioners of
France. Yet it is some consolation to reflect that, in our time,
a public man would be thought lost to all sense of duty and of
shame, who should not spurn from him a temptation which
conquered the virtue and the pride of Algernon Sidney.
The effect of these intrigues was that England, though she
occasionally took a menacing attitude, remained inactive till
the continental war, having lasted near seven years, was ter-
minated, in 1678, by the treaty of Nimeguen. The United
Provinces, which in 1672 had seemed to be on the verge of
utter ruin, obtained honourable and advantageous terms.
This narrow escape was generally ascribed to the ability and
courage of the young Stadtholder. His fame was great
throughout Europe, and especially among the English, who
regarded him as one of their own princes, and rejoiced to see
him the husband of their future Queen. France retained
many important towns in the Low Countries and the great
province of Franche Comte. Almost the whole loss was
borne by the decaying monarchy of Spain.
A few months after the termination of hostilities on the
continent came a great crisis in English politics. Towards
such a crisis things had been tending during eighteen years.
The whole stock of popularity, great as it was, with which
the King had commenced his administration, had long been
expended. To loyal enthusiasm had succeeded profound dis-
affection. The public mind had now measured back again
the space over which it had passed between 1640 and 1660,
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 1 73
and was once more in the state in which it had been when
the Long Parhament met.
The prevaihng discontent was compounded of many feel-
ings. One of these was wounded national pride. That
generation had seen England, during a few years, allied on
equal terms with France, victorious over Holland and Spain,
the mistress of the sea, the terror of Rome, the head of the
Protestant interest. Her resources had not diminished ; and
it might have been expected that she would have been at least
as highly considered in Europe under a legitimate King,
strong in the affection and willing obedience of his subjects,
as she had been under an usurper whose utmost vigilance and
energy were required to keep down a mutinous people. Yet
she had, in consequence of the imbecility and meanness of
her rulers, sunk so low that any German or Italian princi-
pality which brought five thousand men into the field was a
more important member of the commonwealth of nations.
With the sense of national humiliation was mingled anxiety
for civil liberty. Rumours, indistinct indeed, but perhaps the
more alarming by reason of their indistinctness, imputed to the
court a deliberate design against all the constitutional rights of
Englishmen. It had even been whispered that this design was
to be carried into effect by the intervention of foreign arms.
The thought of such intervention made the blood, even of the
Cavaliers, boil in their veins. Some who had always professed
the doctrine of non-resistance in its full extent were now heard
to mutter that there was one limitation to that doctrine. If a
foreign force were brought over to coerce the nation, they
would not answer for their own patience.
But neither national pride nor anxiety for public liberty had
so great an influence on the popular mind as hatred of the
Roman Cathofic religion. That hatred had become one of the
ruling passions of the community, and was as strong in the
ignorant and profane as in those who were Protestants from
conviction. The cruelties of Mary's reign, cruelties which
even in the most accurate and sober narrative excite just
detestation, and which were neither accurately nor soberly
related in the popular martyrologies, the conspiracies against
Elizabeth, and above all the Gunpowder Plot, had left in the
minds of the vulgar a deep and bitter feeling which was kept
up by annual commemorations, prayers, bonfires, and proces-
sions. It should be added that those classes which were
peculiarly distinguished by attachment to the throne, the clergy
and the landed gentry, had peculiar reasons for regarding the
174 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Church of Rome with aversion. The clergy trembled for their
benefices ; the landed gentry for their abbeys and great tithes.
While the memory of the reign of the Saints was still recent,
hatred of Popery had in some degree given place to hatred of
Puritanism : but, during the eighteen years which had elapsed
since the Restoration, the hatred of Puritanism had abated,
and the hatred of Popery had increased. The stipulations of
the treaty of Dover were accurately known to very few : but
some hints had got abroad. The general impression was that
a great blow was about to be aimed at the Protestant religion.
The king was suspected by many of a leaning towards Rome.
His brother and heir presumptive was known to be a bigoted
Roman Catholic. The first Duchess of York had died a
Roman Catholic. James had then, in defiance of the
remonstrances of the House of Commons, taken to wife the
Princess Mary of Modena, another Roman Catholic. If there
should be sons by this marriage, there was reason to fear that
they might be bred Roman Catholics, and that a long
succession of princes, hostile to the established faith, might sit
on the English throne. The constitution had recently been
violated for the purpose of protecting the Roman Catholics
from the penal laws. The ally by whom the policy of England
had, during many years, been chiefly governed was not only a
Roman CathoHc, but a persecutor of the reformed Churches.
Under such circumstances it is not strange that the common
people should have been inclined to apprehend a return of the
times of her whom they called Bloody Mary.
Thus the nation was in such a temper that the smallest spark
might raise a flame. At this conjuncture fire was set in two
places at once to the vast mass of combustible matter ; and in
a moment the whole was in a blaze.
The French court, which knew Danby to be its mortal
enemy, artfully contrived to ruin him by making him pass for
its friend. Lewis, by the instrumentality of Ralph Montague,
a faithless and shameless man who had resided in France as
minister from England, laid before the House of Commons
proofs that the Treasurer had been concerned in an application
made by the court of Whitehall to the court of Versailles for
a sum of money. This discovery produced its natural effect.
The Treasurer was, in truth, exposed to the vengeance of
Parliament, not on account of his delinquencies, but on account
of his merits ; not because he had been an accomplice in a
criminal transaction, but because he had been a most unwilling
and unserviceable accomplice. But of the circumstances.
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 1 75
which have, in the judgment of posterity, greatly extenuated
his fault, his contemporaries were ignorant. In their view he
was the broker who had sold England to France. It seemed
clear that his greatness was at an end, and doubtful whether
his head could be saved.
Yet was the ferment excited by this discovery slight, when
compared with the commotion which arose when it was noised
abroad that a great Popish plot had been detected. One Titus
Oates, a clergyman of the Church of England, had, by his
disorderly life and heterodox doctrine, drawn on himself the
censure of his spiritual superiors, had been compelled to quit
his benefice, and had ever since led an infamous and vagrant
life. He had once professed himself a Roman Catholic, and
had passed some time on the Continent in English colleges of
the order of Jesus. In those seminaries he had heard much
wild talk about the best means of bringing England back to
the true Church. From hints thus furnished he constructed a
hideous romance, resembling rather the dream of a sick man
than any transaction which ever took place in the real world.
The Pope, he said, had entrusted the government of England
to the Jesuits. The Jesuits had, by commissions under the
seal of their society, appointed Catholic clergymen, noblemen,
and gentlemen, to all the highest offices in Church and State.
The Papists had burned down London once. They had tried
to burn it down again. They were at that moment planning
a scheme for setting fire to all the shipping in the Thames.
They were to rise at a signal and massacre all their Protestant
neighbours. A French army was at the same time to land in
Ireland. All the leading statesmen and divines of England
were to be murdered. Three or four schemes had been formed
for assassinating the King. He was to be stabbed. He was
to be poisoned in his medicine. He was to be shot with
silver bullets. The public mind was so sore and excitable
that these lies readily found credit with the vulgar ; and two
events which speedily took place led even some reflecting
men to suspect that the tale, though evidently distorted and
exaggerated, might have some foundation.
Edward Coleman, a very busy, and not very honest, Roman
Catholic intriguer, had been among the persons accused.
Search was made for his papers. It was found that he had
just destroyed the greater part of them. But a few which had
escaped contained some passages which, to minds strongly
prepossessed, might seem to confirm the evidence of Oates.
Those passages indeed, when candidly construed, appear to
176 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
express little more than the hopes which the posture of affairs,
the predilections of Charles, the still stronger predilections of
James, and the relations existing between the French and
English Courts, might naturally excite in the mind of a Roman
Catholic strongly attached to the interests of his Church. But
the country was not then inclined to construe the letters of
Papists candidly ; and it was urged, with some show of reason,
that, if papers which had been passed over as unimportant
were filled with matter so suspicious, some great mystery of
iniquity must have been contained in those documents which
had been carefully committed to the flames.
A few days later it was known that Sir Edmondsbufy
Godfrey, an eminent justice of the peace who had taken the
depositions of Gates against Coleman, had disappeared. Search
was made ; and Godfrey's corpse was found in a field near
London. It was clear that he had died by violence. It was
equally clear that he had not been set upon by robbers. His
fate is to this day a secret. Some think that he perished by
his own hand ; some, that he was slain by a private enemy.
The most improbable supposition is that he was murdered by
the party hostile to the court, in order to give colour to the
story of the plot. The most probable supposition seems, on
the whole, to be that some hot-headed Roman Catholic, driven
to frenzy by the lies of Gates and by the insults of the multi-
tude, and not nicely distinguishing between the perjured
accuser and the innocent magistrate, had taken a revenge of
which the history of persecuted sects furnishes but too many
examples. If this were so, the assassin must have afterwards
bitterly execrated his own wickedness and folly. The capital
and the whole nation went mad with hatred and fear. 1 he
penal laws, which had begun to lose something of their edge,
were sharpened anew. Everywhere justices were busied in
searching houses and seizing papers. All the gaols were filled
with Papists. London had the aspect of a city in a state of
siege. The trainbands were under arms all night. Prepara-
tions were made for barricading the great thoroughfares.
Patroles marched up and down the streets. Cannon were
planted round Whitehall. No citizen thought himself safe
unless he carried under his coat a small flail loaded with lead
to brain the Popish assassins. The corpse of the murdered
magistrate was exhibited during several days to the gaze of
great multitudes, and was then committed to the grave with
strange and terrible ceremonies, which indicated rather fear
and the thirst of vengeance than sorrow or religious hope.
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 1 77
The Houses insisted that a guard should be placed in the vaults
over which they sate, in order to secure them against a second
Gunpowder Plot. All their proceedings were of a piece with
this demand. Ever since the reign of Elizabeth the oath of
supremacy had been exacted from members of the House of
Commons. Some Roman Catholics, however, had contrived
so to interpret this oath that they could take it without scruple.
A more stringent test was now added, and the Roman Catholic
Lords were for the first time excluded from their seats in
parliament. Strong resolutions were adopted against the
Queen. The Commons threw one of the Secretaries of State
into prison for having countersigned commissions directed to
gentlemen who were not good Protestants. They impeached
the Lord Treasurer of high treason. Nay, they so far forgot
the doctrine which, while the memory of the civil war was still
recent, they had loudly professed, that they even attempted to
wrest the command of the militia out of the King's hands. To
such a temper had eighteen years of misgovernment brought
the most loyal Parliament that had ever met in England.
Yet it may seem strange that, even in that extremity, the
King should have ventured to appeal to the people ; for the
people were more excited than their representatives. The
Lower House, discontented as it was, contained a larger
number of Cavaliers than were likely to find seats again. But
it was thought that a dissolution would put a stop to the
prosecution of the Lord Treasurer, a prosecution which might
probably bring to light all the guilty mysteries of the French
alliance, and might thus cause extreme personal annoyance
and embarrassment to Charles. Accordingly, in January 1679,
the Parliament, which had been in existence ever since the
beginning of the year 1661, was dissolved; and writs were
issued for a general election.
During some weeks the contention over the whole country
was fierce and obstinate beyond example. Unprecedented
sums were expended. New tactics were employed. It was
remarked by the pamphleteers of that time as something extra-
ordinary that horses were hired at a great charge for the
conveyance of electors. The practice of splitting freeholds
for the purpose of multiplying votes dates from this memorable
struggle. Dissenting preachers, who had long hidden them-
selves in quiet nooks from persecution, now emerged from
their retreats, and rode from village to village, for the purpose
of rekindling the zeal of the scattered people of God. The
tide ran strong against the government. Most of the new
178 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
members came up to Westminster in a mood little differing
from that of their predecessors who had sent Strafford and
Laud to the Tower.
Meanwhile the courts of justice, which ought to be, in the
midst of political commotions, sure places of refuge for the
innocent of every party, were disgraced by wilder passions and
fouler corruptions than were to be found even on the hustings.
The tale of Oates, though it had sufficed to convulse the whole
realm, would not, until confirmed by other evidence, suffice to
destroy the humblest of those whom he had accused. For, by
the old law of England, two witnesses are necessary to establish
a charge of treason. But the success of the first impostor
produced its natural consequences. In a few weeks he had
been raised from penury and obscurity to opulence, to power
which made him the dread of princes and nobles, and to
notoriety such as has for low and bad minds all the attractions
of glory. He was not long without coadjutors and rivals. A
wretch named Carstairs, who had earned a living in Scotland
by going disguised to conventicles and then informing against
the preachers, led the way. Bedloe, a noted swindler, followed ;
and soon, from all the brothels, gambling houses, and spung-
ing houses of London, false witnesses poured forth to swear
away the lives of Roman Catholics. One came with a story
about an army of thirty thousand men who were to muster in
the disguise of pilgrims at Corunna, and to sail thence to
Wales. Another had been promised canonization and five
hundred pounds to murder the King. A third had stepped
into an eating house in Covent Garden and had there heard a
great Roman Catholic banker vow, in the hearing of all the
guests and drawers, to kill the heretical tyrant, Oates, that he
might not be eclipsed by his imitators, soon added a large
supplement to his original narrative. He had the portentous
impudence to affirm, among other things, that he had once
stood behind a door which was ajar, and had there overheard
the Queen declare that she had resolved to give her consent to
the assassination of her husband. The vulgar befieved, and
the highest magistrates pretended to believe, even such fictions
as these. The chief judges of the realm were corrupt, cruel,
and timid. The leaders of the Country Party encouraged the
prevailing delusion. The most respectable among them,
indeed, were themselves so far deluded as to believe the
greater part of the evidence of the plot to be true. Such men
as Shaftesbury and Buckingham doubtless perceived that the
whole was a romance. But it was a romance which served
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 1 79
their turn ; and to their seared consciences the death of an
innocent man gave no more uneasiness than the death of a
partridge. The juries partook of the feehngs then common
throughout the nation, and were encouraged by the bench to
indulge those feelings without restraint. The multitude ap-
plauded Oates and his confederates, hooted and pelted the
witnesses who appeared on behalf of the accused, and shouted
with joy when the verdict of Guilty was pronounced. It was
in vain that the sufferers appealed to the respectability of their
past lives : for the public mind was possessed with a belief that
the more conscientious a Papist was, the more likely he must
be to plot against a Protestant government. It was in vain
that, just before the cart passed from under their feet, they
resolutely affirmed their innocence : for the general opinion
was that a good Papist considered all lies which were serviceable
to his Church as not only excusable but meritorious.
While innocent blood was shedding under the forms of
justice, the new Parliament met ; and such was the violence of
the predominant party that even men whose youth had been
passed amidst revolutions, men who remembered the attainder
of Strafford, the attempt on the five members, the abolition of
the House of Lords, the execution of the King, stood aghast
at the aspect of public affairs. The impeachment of Danby
was resumed. He pleaded the royal pardon. But the Com-
mons treated the plea with contempt, and insisted that the
trial should proceed. Danby, however, was not their chief
object. They were convinced that the only effectual way of
securing the liberties and religion of the nation was to exclude
the Duke of York from the throne.
The King was in great perplexity. He had insisted that
his brother, the sight of whom inflamed the populace to
madness, should retire for a time to Brussels : but this con-
cession did not seem to have produced any favourable effect.
The Roundhead party was now decidedly preponderant.
Towards that party leaned millions who had, at the time of
the Restoration, leaned towards the side of prerogative. Of
the old Cavaliers many participated in the prevailing fear of
Popery, and many, bitterly resenting the ingratitude of the
prince for whom they had sacrificed so much, looked on his
distress as carelessly as he had looked on theirs. Even the
Anglican clergy, mortified and alarmed by the apostasy of the
Duke of York, so far countenanced the opposition as to join
cordially in the outcry against the Roman Catholics.
The King in this extremity had recourse to Sir William
I80 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Temple. Of all the official men of that age Temple had
preserved the fairest character. The Triple Alliance had been
his work. He had refused to take any part in the politics of
the Cabal, and had, while that administration directed affairs,
lived in strict privacy. He had quitted his retreat at the call
of Danby, had made peace between England and Holland,
and had borne a chief part in bringing about the marriage of
the Lady Mary to her cousin the Prince of Orange. Thus
he had the credit of every one of the few good things which
had been done by the government since the Restoration. Of
the numerous crimes and blunders of the last eighteen years
none could be imputed to him. His private life, though
not austere, was decorous : his manners were popular ; and
he was not to be corrupted either by titles or by money.
Something, however, was wanting to the character of this
respectable statesman. The temperature of his patriotism was
lukewarm. He prized his ease and his personal dignity too
much, and shrank from responsibility with a pusillanimous
fear. Nor indeed had his habits fitted him to bear a part in
the conflicts of our domestic factions. He had reached his
fiftieth year without having sate in the English Parliament ;
and his official experience had been almost entirely acquired
at foreign courts. He was justly esteemed one of the first
diplomatists in Europe : but the talents and accomplishments
of a diplomatist are widely different from those which qualify
a politician to lead the House of Commons in agitated times.
The scheme which he proposed showed considerable in-
genuity. Though not a profound philosopher, he had thought
more than most busy men of the world on the general prin-
ciples of government ; and his mind had been enlarged by
historical studies and foreign travel. He seems to have
discerned more clearly than most of his contemporaries one
cause of the difficulties by which the government was beset.
The character of the English polity was gradually changing.
The Parliament was slowly, but constantly, gaining ground on
the prerogative. The line between the legislative and executive
powers was in theory as strongly marked as ever, but in
practice was daily becoming fainter and fainter. The theory
of the constitution was that the King might name his own
ministers. But the Hoxise of Commons had driven Clarendon,
the Cabal, and Danby successively from the direction of affairs.
The theory of the constitution was that the King alone had the
power of making peace and war. But the House of Commons
had forced him to make peace with Holland, and had all but
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND l8l
forced him to make war with France. The theory of the
constitution was that the King was the sole judge of the
cases in which it might be proper to pardon offenders. Yet
he was so much in dread of the House of Commons that,
at that moment, he could not venture to rescue from the
gallows men whom he well knew to be the innocent victims
of perjury.
Temple, it should seem, was desirous to secure to the
legislature its undoubted constitutional powers, and yet to
prevent it, if possible, from encroaching further on the
province of the executive administration. With this view he
determined to interpose between the sovereign and the Parlia-
ment a body which might break the shock of their collision.
There was a body, ancient, highly honourable, and recognised
by the law, which, he thought, might be so remodelled as
to serve this purpose. He determined to give to the Privy
Council a new character and office in the government. The
number of Councillors he fixed at thirty. Fifteen of them
were to be the chief ministers of state, of law, and of religion.
The other fifteen were to be unplaced noblemen and gentle-
men of ample fortune and high character. There was to be
no interior cabinet. All the thirty were to be entrusted with
every political secret, and summoned to every meeting; and
the King was to declare that he would, on every occasion, be
guided by their advice.
Temple seems to have thought that, by this contrivance, he
could at once secure the nation against the tyranny of the
crown, and the crown against the encroachments of the Parlia-
ment. It was, on one hand, highly improbable that schemes
such as had been formed by the Cabal would be even pro-
pounded for discussion in an assembly consisting of thirty
eminent men, fifteen of whom were bound by no tie of interest
to the court. On the other hand, it might be hoped that the
Commons, content with the guarantee against misgovernment
which such a Privy Council furnished, would confine themselves
more than they had of late done to their strictly legislative
functions, and would no longer think it necessary to pry into
every part of the executive administration.
This plan, though in some respects not unworthy of the
abilities of its author, was in principle vicious. The new board
was half a cabinet and half a Parliament, and, like almost
every other contrivance, whether mechanical or political, which
is meant to serve two purposes altogether different, failed of
accomplishing either. It was too large and too divided to be
1 82 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
a good administrative body. It was too closely connected with
the crown to be a good checking body. It contained just
enough of popular ingredients to make it a bad council of
state, unfit for the keeping of secrets, for the conducting of
delicate negotiations, and for the administration of war. Yet
were these popular ingredients by no means sufficient to secure
the nation against misgovernment. The plan, therefore, even
if it had been fairly tried, could scarcely have succeeded ; and
it was not fairly tried. The King was fickle and perfidious :
the Parliament was excited and unreasonable ; and the materials
out of which the new Council was made, though perhaps the
best which that age afforded, were still bad.
The commencement of the new system was, however, hailed
with general delight ; for the people were in a temper to think
any change an improvement. They were also pleased by some
of the new nominations. Shaftesbury, now their favourite,
was appointed Lord President. Russell and some other dis-
tinguished members of the Country Party were sworn of the
Council. But in a few days all was again in confusion. The
inconveniences of having so numerous a cabinet were such that
Temple himself consented to infringe one of the fundamental
rules which he had laid down, and to become one of a small
knot which really directed everything. With him were joined
three other ministers, Arthur Capel, Earl of Essex, George
Savile, Viscount Halifax, and Robert Spencer, Earl of Sunder-
land.
Of the Earl of Essex, then First Commissioner of the
Treasury, it is sufficient to say that he was a man of solid,
though not brilliant parts, and of grave and melancholy
character, that he had been connected with the Country Party,
and that he was at this time honestly desirous to effect, on
terms beneficial to the State, a reconciliation between that party
and the throne.
Among the statesmen of that age Halifax was, in genius, the
first. His intellect was fertile, subtle, and capacious. His
polished, luminous, and animated eloquence, set off by the
silver tones of his voice, was the delight of the House of Lords.
His conversation overflowed with thought, fancy, and wit. His
political tracts well deserve to be studied for their literary
merit, and fully entitle him to a place among English classics.
To the weight derived from talents so great and various he
united all the influence which belongs to rank and ample
possessions. Yet he was less successful in politics than many
who enjoyed smaller advantages. Indeed, those intellectual
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 1 83
peculiarities which make his writings valuable frequently
impeded him in the contests of active life. For he always saw
passing events, not in the point of view in which they commonly
appear to one who bears a part in them, but in the point of
view in which, after the lapse of many years, they appear to
the philosophic historian. With such a turn of mind, he
could not long continue to act cordially with any body of men.
All the prejudices, all the exaggerations of both the great
parties in the State moved his scorn. He despised the mean
arts and unreasonable clamours of demagogues. He despised
still more the doctrines of divine right and passive obedience.
He sneered impartially at the bigotry of the Churchman and
at the bigotry of the Puritan. He was equally unable to
comprehend how any man should object to Saints' days and
surplices, and how any man should persecute any other man
for objecting to them. In temper he was what, in our time, is
called a Conservative. In theory he was a Republican. Even
when his dread of anarchy and his disdain for vulgar delusions
led him to side for a time with the defenders of arbitrary
power, his intellect was always with Locke and Milton.
Indeed, his jests upon hereditary monarchy were sometimes
such as would have better become a member of the Calfs
Head Club than a Privy Councillor of the Stuarts. In religion
he was so far from being a zealot that he was called by the
uncharitable an atheist : but this imputation he vehemently
repelled ; and in truth, though he sometimes gave scandal
by the way in which he exerted his rare powers both of
argumentation and of ridicule on serious subjects, he seems
to have been by no means unsusceptible of religious
impressions.
He was the chief of those politicians whom the two great
parties contemptuously called Trimmers. Instead of quarrel-
ling with this nickname, he assumed it as a title of honour,
and vindicated, with great vivacity, the dignity of the appella-
tion. Every thing good, he said, trims between extremes.
The temperate zone trims between the climate in which men
are roasted and the climate in which they are frozen. The
English Church trims between the Anabaptist madness and
the Papist lethargy. The English constitution trims between
Turkish despotism and Polish anarchy. Virtue is nothing but
a just temper between propensities any one of which, if
indulged to excess, becomes vice. Nay, the perfection of the
Supreme Being himself consists in the exact equilibrium of
attributes, none of which could preponderate without disturbing
G34
184 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
the whole moral and physical order of the world.* Thus
Halifax was a Trimmer on principle. He was also a Trimmer
by the constitution both of his head and of his heart. His
understanding was keen, sceptical, inexhaustibly fertile in
distinctions and objections ; his taste refined ; his sense of the
ludicrous exquisite ; his temper placid and forgiving, but
fastidious, and by no means prone either to malevolence or to
enthusiastic admiration. Such a man could not long be
constant to any band of political allies. He must not, how-
ever, be confounded with the vulgar crowd of renegades. For
though, like them, he passed from side to side, his transition
was always in the direction opposite to theirs. He had nothing
in common with those who fly from extreme to extreme, and
who regard the party which they have deserted with an
animosity far exceeding that of consistent enemies. His place
was between the hostile divisions of the community, and he
never wandered far beyond the frontier of either. The party
to which he at any moment belonged was the party which, at
that moment, he liked least, because it was the party of which
at that moment he had the nearest view. He was therefore
always severe upon his violent associates, and was always in
friendly relations with his moderate opponents. Every faction
in the day of its insolent and vindictive triumph incurred his
censure ; and every faction, when vanquished and persecuted,
found in him a protector. To his lasting honour it must be
mentioned that he attempted to save those victims whose fate
has left the deepest stain both on the Whig and on the Tory
name.
He had greatly distinguished himself in opposition, and had
thus drawn on himself the royal displeasure, which was indeed
so strong, that he was not admitted into the Council of Thirty
without much difficulty and long altercation. As soon, how-
ever, as he had obtained a footing at court, the charms of his
manner and of his conversation made him a favourite. He
was seriously alarmed by the violence of the public discontent.
He thought that liberty was for the present safe, and that
order and legitimate authority were in danger. He therefore,
as was his fashion, joined himself to the weaker side. Perhaps
his conversion was not wholly disinterested. For study and
reflection, though they had emancipated him from many
vulgar prejudices, had left him a slave to vulgar desires.
* It will be seen that I believe Halifax to have been the author, or at
least one of the authors, of the "Character of a Trimmer," which, for a
time, went under the name of his kinsman, Sir William Coventry.
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND I 85
Money he did not want ; and there is no evidence that he
ever obtained it by any means which, in that age, even severe
censors considered as dishonourable ; but rank and power had
strong attractions for him. He pretended, indeed, that he
considered titles and great offices as baits which could allure
none but fools, that he hated business, pomp, and pageantry,
and that his dearest wish was to escape from the bustle and
glitter of Whitehall to the quiet woods which surrounded his
ancient mansion at Rufford : but his conduct was not a little
at variance with his professions. In truth he wished to com-
mand the respect at once of courtiers and of philosophers, to
be admired for attaining high dignities, and to be at the same
time admired for despising them.
Sunderland was Secretary of State. In this man the political
immorahty of his age was personified in the most lively manner.
Nature had given him a keen understanding, a restless and
mischievous temper, a cold heart, and an abject spirit. His
mind had undergone a training by which all his vices had
been nursed up to the rankest maturity. At his entrance into
public life, he had passed several years in diplomatic posts
abroad, and had been, during some time, minister in France.
Every calling has its peculiar temptations. There is no
injustice in saying that diplomatists, as a class, have always
been more distinguished by their address, by the art with
which they win the confidence of those with whom they have
to deal, and by the ease with which they catch the tone of
every society into which they are admitted, than by generous
enthusiasm or austere rectitude; and the relations between
Charles and Lewis were such that no English nobleman could
long reside in France as envoy, and retain any patriotic or
honourable sentiment. Sunderland came forth from the bad
school in which he had been brought up, cunning, supple,
shameless, free from all prejudices, and destitute of all prin-
ciples. He was, by hereditary connection, a Cavalier : but
with the Cavaliers he had nothing in common. They were
zealous for monarchy, and condemned in theory all resistance.
Yet they had sturdy English hearts which would never have
endured real despotism. He, on the contrary, had a languid
speculative liking for republican institutions, which was com-
patible with perfect readiness to be in practice the most servile
instrument of arbitrary power. Like many other accomplished
flatterers and negotiators, he was far more skilful in the art of
reading the characters and practising on the weaknesses of
individuals, than in the art of discerning the feelings of great
1 86 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
masses, and of foreseeing the approach of great revolutions.
He was adroit in intrigue ; and it was difScult even for shrewd
and experienced men who had been amply forewarned of his
perfidy to withstand the fascination of his manner, and to
refuse credit to his professions of attachment. But he was so
intent on observing and courting particular persons, that he
forgot to study the temper of the nation. He therefore
miscalculated grossly with respect to all the most momentous
events of his time. Every important movement and rebound
of the public mind took him by surprise ; and the world,
unable to understand how so clever a man could be blind to"
what was clearly discerned by the politicians of the coffee
houses, sometimes attributed to deep design what were in
truth mere blunders.
It was only in private conference that his eminent abilities
displayed themselves. In the royal closet, or in a very small
circle, he exercised great influence. But at the Council board
he was taciturn ; and in the House of Lords he never opened
his lips.
The four confidential advisers of the crown soon found tha.t
their position was embarrassing and invidious. The other
members of the Council murmured at a distinction inconsistent
with the King's promises ; and some of them, with Shaftesbury
at their head, again betook themselves to strenuous opposition
in Parliament. The agitation, which had been suspended by
the late changes, speedily became more violent than ever. It
was in vain that Charles offered to grant to the Commons any
security for the Protestant religion which they could devise,
provided only that they would not touch the order of succes-
sion. They would hear of no compromise. They would have
the Exclusion Bill and nothing but the Exclusion Bill. The
King, therefore, a few weeks after he had publicly promised to
take no step without the advice of his new Council, went down
to the House of Lords without mentioning his intention in
Council, and prorogued the Parliament.
The day of that prorogation, the twenty-sixth of May 1679,
is a great era in our history. For on that day the Habeas
Corpus Act received the royal assent. From the time of the
Great Charter, the substantive law respecting the personal
liberty of Englishmen had been nearly the same as at present :
but it had been inefficacious for want of a stringent system of
procedure. What was needed was not a new right, but a
prompt and searching remedy , and such a remedy the Habeas
Corpus Act supplied. The King would gladly have refused
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 1 87
his consent to that measure : but he was about to appeal from
his Parliament to his people on the question of the succession ;
and he could not venture, at so critical a moment, to reject a
bill which was in the highest degree popular.
On the same day, the press of England became for a short
time free. In old times printers had been strictly controlled
by the Court of Star Chamber. The Long Parliament had
abolished the Star Chamber, but had, in spite of the philo-
sophical and eloquent expostulation of Milton, established and
maintained a censorship. Soon after the Restoration, an Act
had been passed which prohibited the printing of unHcensed
books ; and it had been provided that this Act should continue
in force till the end of the first session of the next Parliament.
That moment had now arrived ; and the King, in the very act
of dismissing the Houses, emancipated the press.
Shortly after the prorogation came a dissolution and another
general election. The zeal and strength of the opposition
were at the height. The cry for the Exclusion Bill was louder
than ever ; and with this cry was mingled another cry, which
fired the blood of the multitude, but which was heard with
regret and alarm by all judicious friends of freedom. Not
only the rights of the Duke of York, an avowed Papist, but
those of his two daughters, sincere and zealous Protestants,
were assailed. It was confidently affirmed that the eldest
natural son of the King had been born in wedlock, and was
lawful heir to the crown.
Charles, while a wanderer on the Continent, had fallen in
at the Hague with Lucy Walters, a Welsh girl of great beauty,
but of weak understanding and dissolute manners. She
became his mistress, and presented him with a son. A
suspicious lover might have had his doubts ; for the lady had
several admirers, and was not supposed to be cruel to any.
Charles, however, readily took her word, and poured forth on
little James Croft, as the boy was then called, an overflowing
fondness, such as seemed hardly to belong to that cool and
careless nature. Soon after the Restoration, the young
favourite, who had learned in France the exercises then con-
sidered necessary to a fine gentleman, made his appearance at
Whitehall. He was lodged in the palace, attended by pages,
and permitted to enjoy several distinctions which had till then
been confined to princes of the blood royal. He was married,
while still in tender youth, to Anne Scott, heiress of the noble
house of Buccleuch. He took her name, and received with
her hand possession of her ample domains. The estate which
1 88 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
he acquired by this match was popularly estimated at not less
than ten thousand pounds a year. Titles, and favours more
substantial than titles, were lavished on him. He was made
Duke of Monmouth in England, Duke of Buccleuch in Scot-
land, a Knight of the Garter, Master of the Horse, Com-
mander of the first troop of Life Guards, Chief Justice of Eyre
south of Trent, and Chancellor of the University of Cambridge.
Nor did he appear to the public unworthy of his high fortunes.
His countenance was eminently handsome and engaging, his
temper sweet, his manners polite and affable. Though a
libertine, he won the hearts of the Puritans. Though he was
known to have been privy to the shameful attack on Sir John
Coventry, he easily obtained the forgiveness of the Country
Party. Even austere moralists owned that, in such a court,
strict conjugal fidelity was scarcely to be expected from one
who, while a child, had been married to another child. Even
patriots were willing to excuse a headstrong boy for visiting
with immoderate vengeance an insult offered to his father.
And soon the stain left by loose amours and midnight brawls
was effaced by honourable exploits. When Charles and Lewis
united their forces against Holland, Monmouth commanded
the English auxiliaries who were sent to the Continent, and
approved himself a gallant soldier and a not unintelligent
officer. On his return he found himself the most popular man
in the kingdom. Nothing was withheld from him but the
crown ; nor did even the crown seem to be absolutely beyond
his reach. The distinction which had most injudiciously been
made between him and the highest nobles had produced evil
consequences. When a boy he had been invited to put on
his hat in the presence chamber, while Howards and Seymours
stood uncovered round him. When foreign princes died, he
had mourned for them in the long purple cloak, which no
other subject, except the Duke of York and Prince Rupert, was
permitted to wear. It was natural that these things should
lead him to regard himself as a legitimate prince of the House
of Stuart. Charles, even at a ripe age, was devoted to his
pleasures and regardless of his dignity. It could hardly be
thought incredible that he should at twenty have secretly
gone through the form of espousing a lady whose beauty had
fascinated him, and who was not to be won on easier terms.
While Monmouth was still a child, and while the Duke of
York still passed for a Protestant, it was rumoured throughout
the country, and even in circles which ought to have been
well informed, that the King had made Lucy Walters his wife,
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND I 89
and that, if every one had his right, her son would be Prince of
Wales. Much was said of a certain black box which, according
to the vulgar belief, contained the contract of marriage.
When Monmouth had returned from the Low Countries with
a high character for valour and conduct, and when the Duke
of York was known to be a member of a church detested by
the great majority of the nation, this idle story became
important. For it there was not the slightest evidence.
Against it there was the solemn asseveration of the King, made
before his Council, and by his order communicated to his
people. But the multitude, always fond of romantic adven-
tures, drank in eagerly the tale of the secret espousals and the
black box. Some chiefs of the opposition acted on this
occasion as they acted with respect to the more odious fable of
Oates, and countenanced a story which they must have
despised. The interest which the populace took in him whom
they regarded as the champion of the true religion, and the
rightful heir of the British throne, was kept up by every
artifice. When Monmouth arrived in London at midnight,
the watchmen were ordered by the magistrates to proclaim
the joyful event through the streets of the City : the people
left their beds : bonfires were lighted : the windows were
illuminated : the churches were opened ; and a merry peal rose
from all the steeples. When he travelled, he was everywhere
received with not less pomp, and with far more enthusiasm,
than had been displayed when Kings had made progresses
through the realm. He was escorted from mansion to
mansion by long cavalcades of armed gentlemen and yeomen.
Cities poured forth their whole population to receive him.
Electors thronged round him, to assure him that their votes
were at his disposal. To such a height were his pretensions
carried, that he not only exhibited on his escutcheon the lions
of England and the lilies of France without the baton sinister
under which, according to the law of heraldry, they were
debruised in token of his illegitimate birth, but ventured to
touch for the king's evil. At the same time, he neglected no
art of condescension by which the love of the multitude could
be conciliated. He stood godfather to the children of the
peasantry, mingled in every rustic sport, wrestled, played at
quarterstaff, and won footraces in his boots against fleet
runners in shoes.
It is a curious circumstance that, at two of the greatest
conjunctures in our history, the chiefs of the Protestant party
should have committed the same error, and should by that
190 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
error have greatly endangered their country and their religion.
At the death of Edward the Sixth they set up the Lady Jane,
without any show of birthright, in opposition, not only to their
enemy Mary, but also to Elizabeth, the true hope of England
and of the Reformation. Thus the most respectable Pro-
testants, with Elizabeth at their head, were forced to make
common cause with the Papists. In the same manner, a
hundred and thirty years later, a part of the opposition, by
setting up Monmouth as a claimant of the crown, attacked the
rights, not only of James, whom they justly regarded as an
implacable foe of their faith and their liberties, but also of the
Prince and Princess of Orange, who were eminently marked out,
both by situation and by personal qualities, as the defenders
of all free governments and of all reformed Churches.
In a few years the folly of this course became manifest At
present the popularity of Monmouth constituted a great part
of the strength of the opposition. The elections went against
the court : the day fixed for the meeting of the Houses drew
near ; and it was necessary that the King should determine on
some line of conduct. Those who advised him discerned the
first faint signs of a change of public feeling, and hoped that, by
merely postponing the conflict, he would be able to secure the
victory. He therefore, without even asking the opinion of the
Council of the Thirty, resolved to prorogue the new Parliament
before it entered on business. At the same time the Duke
of York, who had returned from Brussels, was ordered to
retire to Scotland, and was placed at the head of the adminis-
tration of that kingdom.
Temple's plan of government was now avowedly abandoned
and very soon forgotten. The Privy Council again became
what it had been. Shaftesbury and those who were connected
with him in politics resigned their seats. Temple himself, as
was his wont in unquiet times, retire'd to his garden and his
library. Essex quitted the board of Treasury, and cast in his
lot with the opposition. But Halifax, disgusted and alarmed
by the violence of his old associates, and Sunderland, who
never quitted place while he could hold it, remained in the
King's service.
In consequence of the resignations which took place at this
conjuncture, the way to greatness was left clear to a new set of
aspirants. Two statesmen, who subsequently rose to the
highest eminence which a British subject can reach, soon began
to attract a large share of the public attention. These were
Lawrence Hyde and Sidney Godolphin.
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND I9I
Lawrence Hyde was the second son of the Chancellor
Clarendon, and was brother of the first Duchess of York. He
had excellent parts, which had been improved by parliamentary
and diplomatic experience ; but the infirmities of his temper
detracted much from the effective strength of his abilities.
Negotiator and courtier as he was, he never learned the art of
governing or of concealing his emotions. When prosperous,
he was insolent and boastful : when he sustained a check, his
undisguised mortification doubled the triumph of his enemies :
very slight provocations sufficed to kindle his anger ; and when
he was angry he said bitter things which he forgot as soon as
he was pacified, but which others remembered many years.
His quickness and penetration would have made him a con-
summate man of business but for his selfsufificiency and
impatience. His writings prove that he had many of the
qualities of an orator : but his irritability prevented him from
doing himself justice in debate : for nothing was easier than to
goad him into a passion ; and, from the moment when he
went into a passion, he was at the mercy of opponents far
inferior to him in capacity.
Unlike most of the leading politicians of that generation he
was a consistent, dogged, and rancorous party man, a Cavalier
of the old school, a zealous champion of the crown and of the
Church, and a hater of Republicans and Nonconformists. He
had consequently a great body of personal adherents. The
clergy especially looked on him as their own man, and extended
to his foibles an indulgence of which, to say the truth, he stood
in some need : for he drank deep ; and when he was in a rage,
— and he very often was in a rage, — he swore like a porter.
He now succeeded Essex at the Treasury. It is to be
observed that the place of First Lord of the Treasury had not
then the importance and dignity which now belong to it.
When there was a Lord Treasurer, that great officer was
generally prime minister : but, when the white staff was in
commission, the chief commissioner did not rank so high as a
Secretary of State. It was not till the time of Walpole that
the First Lord of the Treasury was considered as the head of
the executive administration.
Godolphin had been bred a page at Whitehall, and had
early acquired all the flexibility and the self-possession of a
veteran courtier. He was laborious, clearheaded, and pro-
foundly versed in the details of finance. Every government,
therefore, found him an useful servant ; and there was nothing
in his opinions or in his character which could prevent him
*G34
192 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
from serving any government. " Sidney Godolphin," said
Charles, "is never in the way, and never out of the way."
This pointed remark goes far to explain Godolphin's extra-
ordinary success in life.
He acted at different times with both the great political
parties : but he never shared in the passions of either. Like
most men of cautious tempers and prosperous fortunes, he had
a strong disposition to support whatever existed. He disliked
revolutions ; and, for the same reason for which he disliked
revolutions, he disliked counter-revolutions. His deportment
was remarkably grave and reserved : but his personal tastes
were low and frivolous ; and most of the time which he could
save from public business was spent in racing, cardplaying, and
cockfighting. He now sate below Rochester at the board of
Treasury, and distinguished himself there by assiduity and
intelligence.
Before the new Parliament was suffered to meet for despatch
of business, a whole year elapsed, an eventful year, which has
left lasting traces in our manners and language. Never before
had political controversy been carried on with so much free-
dom. Never before had political clubs existed with so
elaborate an organisation, or so formidable an influence. The
one question of the exclusion occupied the public mind. All
the presses and pulpits of the realm took part in the conflict.
On one side it was maintained that the constitution and
religion of the State would never be secured under a Popish
King ; on the other, that the right of James to wear the crown
in his turn was derived from God, and could not be annulled,
even by the consent of all the branches of the legislature.
Every county, every town, every family, was in agitation.
The civilities and hospitalities of neighbourhood were inter-
rupted. The dearest ties of friendship and of blood were
sundered. Even schoolboys were divided into angry parties ;
and the Duke of York and the Earl of Shaftesbury had zealous
adherents on all the forms of Westminster and Eton. The
theatres shook with the roar of the contending factions. Pope
Joan was brought on the stage by the zealous Protestants.
Pensioned poets filled their prologues and epilogues with
eulogies on the King and the Duke. The malecontents
besieged the throne with petitions, demanding that Parliament
might be forthwith convened. The loyalists sent up addresses,
expressing the utmost abhorrence of all who presumed to
dictate to the sovereign. The citizens of London assembled
by tens of thousands to bum the Pope in effigy. The
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 1 93
government posted cavalry at Temple Bar, and placed
ordnance round Whitehall. In that year our tongue was
enriched with two words, Mob and Sham, remarkable
memorials of a season of tumult and imposture.* Opponents
of the court were called Birminghams, Petitioners, and
Exclusionists. Those who took the King's side were Anti-
birminghams, Abhorrers, and Tantivies. These appellations
soon became obsolete : but at this time were first heard two
nicknames which, though originally given in insult, were soon
assumed with pride, which are still in daily use, which have
spread as widely as the English race, and which will last as
long as the English literature. It is a curious circumstance
that one of these nicknames was of Scotch, and the other of
Irish, origin. Both in Scotland and in Ireland, misgovern-
ment had called into existence bands of desperate men whose
ferocity was heightened by religious enthusiasm. In Scotland,
some of the persecuted Covenanters, driven mad by oppression,
had lately murdered the Primate, had taken arms against the
government, had obtained some advantages against the King's
forces, and had not been put down till Monmouth, at the
head of some troops from England, had routed them at Both-
well Bridge. These zealots were most numerous among the
rustics of the western lowlands, who were vulgarly called
Whigs. Thus the appellation of Whig was fastened on the
Presbyterian zealots of Scotland, and was transferred to those
English politicians who showed a disposition to oppose the
court, and to treat Protestant Nonconformists with indulgence.
The bogs of Ireland, at the same time, afforded a refuge to
Popish outlaws, much resembling those who were afterwards
known as Whiteboys. These men were then called Tories.
The name of Tory was therefore given to Englishmen who
refused to concur in excluding a Roman Catholic prince from
the throne.
The rage of the hostile factions would have been sufficiently
violent, if it had been left to itself But it was studiously
exasperated by the common enemy of both. Lewis still con-
tinued to bribe and flatter both court and opposition. He
exhorted Charles to be firm : he exhorted James to raise a
civil war in Scotland : he exhorted the Whigs not to flinch,
and to rely with confidence on the protection of France.
Through all this agitation a discerning eye might have per-
ceived that the public opinion was gradually changing. The
persecution of the Roman Catholics went on ; but convictions
* North's Examen, 231. 574-
194 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
were no longer matters of course. A new brood of false wit-
nesses, among whom a villain named Dangerfield was the most
conspicuous, infested the courts : but the stories of these men,
though better constructed than that of Oates, found less credit.
Juries were no longer so easy of belief as during the panic
which had followed the murder of Godfrey ; and Judges who,
while the popular frenzy was at the height, had been its most
obsequious instruments, now ventured to express some part of
what they had from the first thought.
At length, in October 1680, the Parliament met. The
Whigs had so great a majority in the Commons that the
Exclusion Bill went through all its stages there without diffi-
culty. The King scarcely knew on what members of his
own cabinet he could reckon. Hyde had been true to his Tory
opinions, and had steadily supported the cause of hereditary
monarchy. But Godolphin, anxious for quiet, and believing
that quiet could be restored only by concession, wished the
bill to pass. Sunderland, ever false and ever short-sighted,
unable to discern the signs of approaching reaction, and
anxious to conciliate the party which he believed to be irresis-
tible, determined to vote against the court. The Duchess of
Portsmouth implored her royal lover not to rush headlong to
destruction. If there were any point on which he had a
scruple of conscience or of honour, it was the question of the
succession ; but during some days it seemed that he would
submit. He wavered, asked what sum the Commons would
give him if he yielded, and suffered a negotiation to be opened
with the leading Whigs. But a deep mutual distrust which
had been many years growing, and which had been carefully
nursed by the arts of France, made a treaty impossible.
Neither side would place confidence in the other. The whole
nation now looked with breathless anxiety to the House of
Lords. The assemblage of peers was large. The King him-
self was present. The debate was long, earnest, and occa
sionally furious. Some hands were laid on the pommels of
swords, in a manner which revived the recollection of the
stormy ParUaments of Henry the Third and Richard the
Second. Shaftesbury and Essex were joined by the
treacherous Sunderland. But the genius of HaUfax bore down
all opposition. Deserted by his most important colleagues, and
opposed to a crowd of able antagonists, he defended the cause
of the Duke of York, in a succession of speeches which, many
years later, were remembered as masterpieces of reasoning, of
wit, and of eloquence. It is seldom that oratory changes
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 1 95
votes. Yet the attestation of contemporaries leaves no doubt
that, on this occasion, votes were changed by the oratory of
Halifax. The Bishops, true to their doctrines, supported the
principle of hereditary right, and the bill was rejected by a
great majority.*
The party which preponderated in the House of Commons,
bitterly mortified by this defeat, found some consolation in
shedding the blood of Roman Catholics. William Howard,
Viscount Stafford, one of the unhappy men who had been
accused of a share in the plot, was brought before the bar of
his peers ; and on the testimony of Oates and of two other false
witnesses, Dugdale and Turberville, was found guilty of high
treason, and suffered death. But the circumstances of his trial
and execution ought to have given an useful warning to the
Whig leaders. A large and respectable minority of the House
of Lords pronounced the prisoner not guilty. The multitude,
which a few months before had received the dying declarations
of Oates's victims with mockery and execrations, now loudly
expressed a belief that Stafford was a murdered man. When
he with his last breath protested his innocence, the cry was,
" God bless you, my Lord ! We believe you, my Lord." A
judicious observer might easily have predicted that the blood
then shed would shortly have blood.
The King determined to try once more the experiment of a
dissolution. A new Parliament was summoned to meet at
Oxford, in March 1681. Since the days of the Plantagenets the
Houses had constantly sate at Westminster, except when the
plague was raging in the capital : but so extraordinary a
conjuncture seemed to require extraordinary precautions. If
* A peer who was present has described the effect of Halifax's oratory
in words which I will quote, because, though they have been long in
print, they are probably known to few even of the most curious and
diligent readers of history.
" Of powerful eloquence and great parts were the Duke's enemies who
did assert the bill ; but a noble Lord appeared against it who, that day, in
all the force of speech, in reison, in arguments of what could concern the
public or the private interests of men, in honour, in conscience, in estate,
did outdo himself and every other man ; and in fine his conduct and his
parts were both victorious, and by him all the wit and malice of that party
was overthrown."
This passage is taken from a memoir of Henry Earl of Peterborough,
in a volume entitled "Succinct Genealogies, by Robert Halstead," fol.
1685. The name of Halstead is fictitious. The real authors were the
Earl of Peterborough himself and his chaplain. The book is extremely
rare. Only twenty-four copies were printed, two of which are now in
the British Museum. Of these two one belonged to George the Fourth,
and the other to Mr. Grenville.
196 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
the Parliament were held in its usual place of assembling,
the House of Commons might declare itself permanent, and
might call for aid on the magistrates and citizens of London.
The trainbands might rise to defend Shaftesbury as they
had risen forty years before to defend Pym and Hampden.
The Guards might be overpowered, the palace forced, the King
a prisoner in the hands of his mutinous subjects. At Oxford
there was no such danger. The University was devoted to the
crown ; and the gentry of the neighbourhood were generally
Tories. Here, therefore, the opposition had more reason than
the King to apprehend violence.
The elections were sharply contested. The Whigs still
composed a majority of the House of Commons : but it was
plain that the Tory spirit was fast rising throughout the country.
It should seem that the sagacious and versatile Shaftesbury
ought to have foreseen the coming change, and to have con-
sented to the compromise which the court offered : but he
appears to have utterly forgotten his old tactics. Instead of
making dispositions which, in the worst event, would have
secured his retreat, he took up a position in which it was
necessary that he should either conquer or perish. Perhaps his
head, strong as it was, had been turned by popularity, by
success, and by the excitement of conflict. Perhaps he had
spurred his party till he could no longer curb it, and was really
hurried on headlong by those whom he seemed to guide.
The eventful day arrived. The meeting at Oxford resembled
rather that of a Polish Diet than that of an English Parliament.
The Whig members were escorted by great numbers of their
armed and mounted tenants and serving men, who exchanged
looks of defiance with the royal Guards. The slightest provoca-
tion might, under such circumstances, have produced a civil
war ; but neither side dared to strike the first blow. The King
again offered to consent to any thing but the Exclusion Bill.
The Commons were determined to accept nothing but the
Exclusion Bill. In a few days the Parliament was again
dissolved.
The King had triumphed. The reaction, which had begun
some months before the meeting of the Houses at Oxford,
now went rapidly on. The nation, indeed, was still hostile to
Popery : but, when men reviewed the whole history of the plot,
they felt that their Protestant zeal had hurried them into folly
and crime, and could scarcely believe that they had been
induced by nursery tales to clamour for the blood of fellow
subjects and fellow Christians. The most loyal, indeed, could
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND I 97
not deny that the administration of Charles had often been
highly blamable. But men who had not the full information
which we possess touching his dealings with France, and who
were disgusted by the violence of the Whigs, enumerated the
large concessions which, during the last few years, he had
made to his Parliaments, and the still larger concessions which
he had declared himself willing to make. He had consented
to the laws which excluded Roman Catholics from the House
of Lords, from the Privy Council, and from all civil and
military offices. He had passed the Habeas Corpus Act. If
securities yet stronger had not been provided against the
dangers to which the constitution and the Church might be
exposed under a Roman Catholic sovereign, the fault lay, not
with Charles who had invited the Parliament to propose such
securities, but with those Whigs who had refused to hear of
any substitute for the Exclusion Bill. One thing only had the
King denied to his people. He had refused to take away his
brother's birthright. And was there not good reason to believe
that this refusal was prompted by laudable feelings? What
selfish motive could faction itself impute to the royal mind ?
The Exclusion Bill did not curtail the reigning King's pre-
rogatives, or diminish his income. Indeed, by passing it, he
might easily have obtained an ample addition to his own
revenue. And what was it to him who ruled after him ? Nay,
if he had personal predilections, they were known to be rather
in favour of the Duke of Monmouth than of the Duke of York.
The most natural explanation of the King's conduct therefore
seemed to be that, careless as was his temper, and loose as
were his morals, he had, on this occasion, acted from a sense
of duty and honour. And, if so, would the nation compel him
to do what he thought criminal and disgraceful ? To apply,
even by strictly constitutional means, a violent pressure to
his conscience, seemed to zealous Royalists ungenerous and
undutiful. But strictly constitutional means were not the only
means which the Whigs were disposed to employ. Signs were
already discernible which portended the approach of great
troubles. Men, who in the time of the civil war and of the
Commonwealth had acquired an odious notoriety, had emerged
from the obscurity in which, after the Restoration, they had
hidden themselves from the general hatred, showed their con-
fident and busy faces everywhere, and appeared to anticipate a
second reign of the Saints. Another Naseby, another High
Court of Justice, another usurper on the throne, the Lords
again ejected from their hall by violence, the Universities again
198 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
purged, the Church again robbed and persecuted, the Puritans
again dominant, to such results did the desperate policy of the
opposition seem to tend.
Animated by such feelings, the majority of the upper and
middle classes hastened to rally round the throne. The
situation of the King bore, at this time, a great resemblance to
that in which his father stood just after the Remonstrance had
been voted. But the reaction of 1641 had not been suffered
to run its course. Charles the First, at the very moment when
his people, long estranged, were returning to him with hearts
disposed to reconciliation, had, by a perfidious violation of the
fundamental laws of the realm, forfeited their confidence for
ever. Had Charles the Second taken a similar course, had he
arrested the Whig leaders in an irregular manner, and impeached
them of high treason before a tribunal which had no legal
jurisdiction over them, it is highly probable that they would
speedily have regained the ascendency which they had lost.
Fortunately »for himself he was induced, at this crisis, to adopt
a policy which, for his ends, was singularly judicious. He
determined to conform to the law, but at the same time to
make vigorous and unsparing use of the law against his advers-
aries. He was not bound to convoke a Parliament till three
years should have elapsed. He was not much distressed for
money. The produce of the taxes which had been settled on
him for life exceeded the estimate. He was at peace with all the
world. He could retrench his expenses by giving up the costly
and useless settlement of Tangier ; and he might hope for
pecuniary aid from France. He had, therefore, ample time and
means for a systematic attack on the opposition under the forms
of the constitution. The Judges were removable at his
pleasure : the juries were nominated by the Sheriffs ; and, in
almost all the counties of England, the Sheriffs were nominated
by himself. Witnesses, of the same class with those who had
recently sworn away the lives of Papists, were ready to swear
away the lives of Whigs.
The first victim was College, a noisy and violent demagogue
of mean birth and education. He was by trade a joiner, and
was celebrated as the inventor of the Protestant flail.* He
had been at Oxford when the Parliament sate there, and was
accused of having planned a rising and an attack on the King's
guards. Evidence was given against him by Dugdale and
* This is mentioned in the curious work entitled " Ragguaglio della
solenne Comparsa fatta in Roma gli otto di Gennaio, 1687, dall' illus-
ti'issimo et eccellentissimo signor Conte di Castlemaine."
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 1 99
Turberville, the same infamous men who had, a few months
earUer, borne false witness against Stafford. In the sight of a
jury of country squires no Exclusionist was likely to find
favour. College was convicted. The crowd which filled the
court house of Oxford received the verdict with a roar of
exultation, as barbarous as that which he and his friends had
been in the habit of raising when innocent Papists were
doomed to the gallows. His execution was the beginning of a
new judicial massacre, not less atrocious than that in which he
had himself borne a share.
The government, emboldened by this first victory, now aimed
a blow at an enemy of a very different class. It was resolved
that Shaftesbury should be brought to trial for his life.
Evidence was collected which, it was thought, would support a
charge of treason. But the facts which it was necessary to
prove were alleged to have been committed in London. The
Sheriffs of London, chosen by the citizens, were zealous Whigs.
They named a Whig grand jury, which threw out the bill.
This defeat, far from discouraging those who advised the King,
suggested to them a new and daring scheme. Since the charter
of the capital was in their way, that charter must be annulled.
It was pretended, therefore, that the City of London had by
some irregularities forfeited its municipal privileges ; and pro-
ceedings were instituted against the corporation in the Court of
King's bench. At the same time those laws which had, soon
after the Restoration, been enacted against Nonconformists,
and which had remained dormant during the ascendency of the
Whigs, were enforced all over the kingdom with extreme rigour.
Yet the spirit of the Whigs was not subdued. Though in
evil plight, they were still a numerous and powerful party ; and,
as they mustered strong in the large towns, and especially in
the capital, they made a noise and a show more than propor-
tioned to their real force. Animated by the recollection of
past triumphs, and by the sense of present oppression, they
overrated both their strength and their wrongs. It was not in
their power to make out that clear and overwhelming case
which can alone justify so violent a remedy as resistance to an
established government. Whatever they might suspect, they
could not prove that their sovereign had entered into a treaty
with France against the religion and liberties of England.
What was apparent was not sufficient to warrant an appeal to
the sword. If the Exclusion Bill had been thrown out, it
had been thrown out by the Lords in the exercise of a right
coeval with the constitution. If the King had dissolved the
200 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Oxford Parliament, he had done so by virtue of a prerogative
which had never been questioned. If the court had, since the
dissolution, done some harsh things, still those things were in
strict conformity with the letter of the law, and with the recent
practice of the malecontents themselves. If the King had
prosecuted his opponents, he had prosecuted them according
to the proper forms, and before the proper tribunals. The
evidence now produced for the crown was at least as worthy of
credit as the evidence on which the noblest blood of England
had lately been shed by the opposition. The treatment which
an accused Whig had now to expect from judges, advocates,
sheriffs, juries, and spectators, was no worse than the treatment
which had lately been thought by the Whigs good enough for
an accused Papist. If the privileges of the City of London
were attacked, they were attacked, not by military violence or
by any disputable exercise of prerogative, but according to the
regular practice of Westminster Hall. No tax was imposed by
royal authority. No law was suspended. The Habeas Corpus
Act was respected. Even the Test Act was enforced. The
opposition therefore could not bring home to the King that
species of misgovernment which alone could justify insurrection.
And, even had his misgovernment been more flagrant than it
was, insurrection would still have been criminal, because it was
almost certain to be unsuccessful. The situation of the Whigs
in 1682 differed widely from that of the Roundheads forty
years before. Those who took up arms against Charles the
First acted under the authority of a Parliament which had been
legally assembled, and which could not, without its own
consent, be legally dissolved. The opponents of Charles the
Second were private men. Almost all the military and naval
resources of the kingdom had been at the disposal of those
who resisted Charles the First. All the military and naval re-
sources of the kingdom were at the disposal of Charles the
Second. The House of Commons had been supported by at
least half the nation against Charles the First. But those who
were disposed to levy war against Charles the Second were
certainly a minority. It could not reasonably be doubted,
therefore, that, if they attempted a rising, they would fail. Still
less could it be doubted that their failure would aggravate
every evil of which they complained. The true policy of the
Whigs was to submit with patience to adversity which was the
natural consequence and the just punishment of their errors, to
wait patiently for that turn of public feeling which must inevit-
ably come, to observe the law, and to avail themselves of the
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 20I
protection, imperfect indeed, but by no means nugatory, which
the law afforded to innocence. Unhappily they took a very
different course. Unscrupulous and hotheaded chiefs of the
party formed and discussed schemes of resistance, and were
heard, if not with approbation, yet with the show of acquies-
cence, by much better men than themselves. It was proposed
that there should be simultaneous insurrections in London, in
Cheshire, at Bristol, and at Newcastle. Communications were
opened with the discontented Presbyterians of Scotland, who
were suffering under a tyranny such as England, in the worst
times, had never known. While the leaders of the opposition
thus revolved plans of open rebellion, but were still restrained
by fears or scruples from taking any decisive step, a design of a
very different kind was meditated by some of their accomplices.
To fierce spirits, unrestrained by principle, or maddened by
fanaticism, it seemed that to waylay and murder the King and
his brother was the shortest and surest way of vindicating the
Protestant religion and the liberties of England. A place and
a time were named ; and the details of the butchery were
frequently discussed, if not definitively arranged. This scheme
was known but to few, and was concealed with especial care
from the upright and humane Russell, and from Monmouth,
who, though not a man of delicate conscience, would have
recoiled with horror from the guilt of parricide. Thus there were
two plots, one within the other. The object of the great Whig
plot was to raise the nation in arms against the government.
The lesser plot, commonly called the Rye House Plot, in which
only a few desperate men were concerned, had for its object
the assassination of the King and of the heir presumptive.
Both plots were soon discovered. Cowardly traitors hastened
to save themselves, by divulging all, and more than all, that
had passed in the deliberations of the party. That only a
small minority of those who meditated resistance had admitted
into their minds the thought of assassination is fully established :
but, as the two conspiracies ran into each other, it was not
difficult for the government to confound them together. The
just indignation excited by the Rye House Plot was extended
for a time to the whole Whig body. The King was now at
liberty to exact full vengeance for years of restraint and
humiliation. Shaftesbury, indeed, had escaped the fate which
his manifold perfidy had well deserved. He had seen that the
ruin of his party was at hand, had in vain endeavoured to
make his peace with the royal brothers, had fled to Holland,
and had died there, under the generous protection of a
202 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
government which he had cruelly wronged. Monmouth threw
himself at his father's feet and found mercy, but soon gave
new offence, and thought it prudent to go into voluntary exile.
Essex perished by his own hand in the Tower. Russell, who
appears to have been guilty of no offence falling within the
definition of high treason, and Sidney, of whose guilt no legal
evidence could be produced, were beheaded in defiance of
law and justice. Russell died with the fortitude of a Christian,
Sidney with the fortitude of a Stoic. Some active politicians
of meaner rank were sent to the gallows. Many quitted the
country. Numerous prosecutions for misprision of treason,
for libel, and for conspiracy were instituted. Convictions were
obtained without difficulty from Tory juries, and rigorous
punishments were inflicted by courtly judges. With these
criminal proceedings were joined civil proceedings scarcely
less formidable. Actions were brought against persons who
had defamed the Duke of York ; and damages tantamount to
a sentence of perpetual imprisonment were demanded by the
plaintiff, and without difficulty obtained. The Court of King's
Bench pronounced that the franchises of the City of London
were forfeited to the crown. Flushed with this great victory,
the government proceeded to attack the constitutions of other
corporations which were governed by Whig officers, and which
had been in the habit of returning Whig members to Par-
liament. Borough after borough was compelled to surrender
its privileges ; and new charters were granted which gave the
ascendency everywhere to the Tories.
These proceedings, however reprehensible, had yet the
semblance of legality. They were also accompanied by an
act intended to quiet the uneasiness with which many loyal
men looked forward to the accession of a Popish sovereign.
The Lady Anne, younger daughter of the Duke of York by
his first wife, was married to George, a prince of the orthodox
House of Denmark. The Tory gentry and clergy might now
flatter themselves that the Church of England had been effec-
tually secured without any violation of the order of succession.
The King and his heir were nearly of the same age. Both
were approaching the decline of life. The King's health was
good. It was therefore probable that James, if he ever came
to the throne, would have but a short reign. Beyond his
reign there was the gratifying prospect of a long series of
Protestant sovereigns.
The liberty of unlicensed printing was of little or no use to
the vanquished party ; for the temper of judges and juries was
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 203
such that no writer whom the government prosecuted for a
libel had any chance of escaping. The dread of punishment
therefore did all that a censorship could have done. Mean-
while, the pulpits resounded with harangues against the sin of
rebellion. The treatises in which Filmer maintained that
hereditary despotism was the form of government ordained by
God, and that limited monarchy was a pernicious absurdity,
had recently appeared, and had been favourably received by a
large section of the Tory party. The University of Oxford, on
the very day on which Russell was put to death, adopted by a
solemn public act these strange doctrines, and ordered the
political works of Buchanan, Milton, and Baxter to be publicly
burned in the court of the Schools.
Thus emboldened, the King at length ventured to overstep
the bounds which he had during some years observed, and to
violate the plain letter of the law. The law was that not more
than three years should pass between the dissolving of one
Parliament and the convoking of another. But, when three
years had elapsed after the dissolution of the Parliament which
sate at Oxford, no writs were issued for an election. This
infraction of the constitution was the more reprehensible,
because the King had little reason to fear a meeting with a new
House of Commons. The counties were generally on his side ;
and many boroughs in which the Whigs had lately held sway
had been so remodelled that they were certain to return none
but courtiers.
In a short time the law was again violated in order to gratify
the Duke of York. That prince was, partly on account of his
religion, and partly on account of the sternness and harshness
of his nature, so unpopular that it had been thought necessary
to keep him out of sight while the Exclusion Bill was before
Parliament, lest his public appearance should give an advan-
tage to the party which was struggling to deprive him of
his birthright. He had therefore been sent to govern Scot-
land, where the savage old tyrant Lauderdale was sinking
into the grave. Even Lauderdale was now outdone. The
administration of James was marked by odious laws, by
barbarous punishments, and by judgments to the iniquity of
which even that age furnished no parallel. The Scottish Privy
Council had power to put state prisoners to the question. But
the sight was so dreadful that, as soon as the boots appeared,
even the most servile and hardhearted courtiers hastened out of
the chamber. The board was sometimes quite deserted : and
it was at length found necessary to make an order that the
204 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
members should keep their seats on such occasions. The
Duke of York, it was remarked, seemed to take pleasure in the
spectacle which some of the worst men then living were unable
to contemplate without pity and horror. He not only came
to Council when the torture was to be inflicted, but watched
the agonies of the sufferers with that sort of interest and
complacency with which men observe a curious experiment in
science. Thus he employed himself at Edinburgh, till the
event of the conflict between the court and the Whigs was no
longer doubtful. He then returned to England : but he was
still excluded by the Test Act from all public employment; nor
did the King at first think it safe to violate a statute which the
great majority of his most loyal subjects regarded as one of the
chief securities of their religion and of their civil rights. When,
however, it appeared, from a succession of trials, that the
nation had patience to endure almost anything that the govern-
ment had courage to do, Charles ventured to dispense with the
law in his brother's favour. The Duke again took his seat in
the Council, and resumed the direction of naval affairs.
These breaches of the constitution excited, it is true, some
murmurs among the moderate Tories, and were not unanimously
approved even by the King's ministers. Halifax in particular,
now a Marquess and Lord Privy Seal, had, from the very day
on which the Tories had by his help gained the ascendant, begun
to turn Whig. As soon as the Exclusion Bill had been thrown
out, he had pressed the House of Lords to make provision
against the danger to which, in the next reign, the liberties and
religion of the nation might be exposed. He now saw with alarm
the violence of that reaction which was, in no small measure,
his own work. He did not try to conceal the scorn which he
felt for the servile doctrines of the University of Oxford. He
detested the French alliance. He disapproved of the long
intermission of Parliaments. He regretted the severity with
which the vanquished party was treated. He who, when the
Whigs were predominant, had ventured to pronounce Stafford
not guilty, ventured, when they were vanquished and helpless,
to intercede for Russell. At one of the last councils which
Charles held a remarkable scene took place. The charter of
Massachusetts had been forfeited. A question arose how, for
the future, the colony should be governed. The general
opinion of the board was that the whole power, legislative as
well as executive, should abide in the crown. Halifax took the
opposite side, and argued with great energy against absolute
monarchy, and in favour of representative government. It was
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 205
vain, he said, to think that a population, sprung from the
English stock, and animated by English feelings, would long
bear to be deprived of English institutions. Life, he exclaimed,
would not be worth having in a country where liberty and
property were at the mercy of one despotic master. The Duke
of York was greatly incensed by this language, and represented
to his brother the danger of retaining in office a man who
appeared to be infected with all the worst notions of Marvell
and Sidney.
Some modern writers have blamed Halifax for continuing in
the ministry while he disapproved of the manner in which both
domestic and foreign affairs were conducted. But this censure
is unjust. Indeed it is to be remarked that the word ministry,
in the sense in which we use it, was then unknown.* The
thing itself did not exist ; for it belongs to an age in which
parliamentary government is fully established. At present the
chief servants of the crown form one body. They are under-
stood to be on terms of friendly confidence with each other,
and to agree as to the main principles on which the executive
administration ought to be conducted. If a slight difference
of opinion arises among them, it is easily compromised : but, if
one of them differs from the rest on a vital point, it is his duty
to resign. While he retains his office, he is held responsible
even for steps which he has tried to dissuade his colleagues
from taking. In the seventeenth century, the heads of the
various branches of the administration were bound together in
no such partnership. Each of them was accountable for his
own acts, for the use which he made of his own official seal, for
the documents which he signed, for the counsel which he gave
to the King. No statesman was held answerable for what he
had not himself done, or induced others to do. If he took
care not to be the agent in what was wrong, and if, when con-
sulted, he recommended what was right, he was blameless. It
would have been thought strange scrupulosity in him to quit
his post, because his advice as to matters not strictly within
his own department was not taken by his master ; to leave the
board of Admiralty, for example, because the finances were in
disorder, or the board of Treasury because the foreign relations
of the kingdom were in an unsatisfactory state. It was, there-
fore, by no means unusual to see in high office, at the same
time, men who avowedly differed from one another as widely
as ever Pulteney differed from Walpole, or Fox from Pitt.
The moderate and constitutional counsels of Halifax were
* North's Examen, 69.
206 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
timidly and feebly seconded by Francis North, Lord Guildford,
who had lately been made Keeper of the Great Seal. The
character of Guildford has been drawn at full length by his
brother Roger North, a most intolerant Tory, a most affected
and pedantic writer, but a vigilant observer of all those minute
circumstances which throw light on the dispositions of men.
It is remarkable that the biographer, though he was under the
influence of the strongest fraternal partiality, and though he
was evidently anxious to produce a flattering likeness, was yet
unable to portray the Lord Keeper otherwise than as the most
ignoble of mankind. Yet the intellect of Guildford was clear,
his industry great, his proficiency in letters and science respect-
able, and his legal learning more than respectable. His faults
were selfishness, cowardice, and meanness. He was not
insensible to the power of female beauty, nor averse from
excess in wine. Yet neither wine nor beauty could ever seduce
the cautious and frugal libertine, even in his earliest youth,
into one fit of indiscreet generosity. Though of noble descent,
he rose in his profession by paying ignominious homage to all
who possessed influence in the courts. He became Chief Jus-
tice of the Common Pleas, and as such was party to some of the
foulest judicial murders recorded in our history. He had sense
enough to perceive from the first that Gates and Bedloe were
impostors : but the Parliament and the country were greatly
excited ; the government had yielded to the pressure ; and
North was not a man to risk a good place for the sake of
justice and humanity. Accordingly, while he was in secret
drawing up a refutation of the whole romance of the Popish
plot, he declared in public that the truth of the story was as
plain as the sun in heaven, and was not ashamed to browbeat,
from the seat of judgment, the unfortunate Roman Catholics
who were arraigned before him for their lives. He had at
length reached the highest post in the law. But a lawyer,
who, after many years devoted to professional labour, engages
in politics for the first time at an advanced period of life,
seldom distinguishes himself as a statesman ; and Guildford
was no exception to the general rule. He was indeed so
sensible of his deficiencies that he never attended the meetings
of his colleagues on foreign affairs. Even on questions relat-
ing to his own profession his opinion had less weight at the
Council board than that of any man who has ever held the
Great Seal. Such as his influence was, however, he used it, as
far as he dared, on the side of the laws.
The chief opponent of Halifax was Lawrence Hyde, who had
THE REIGN OF CHARLES THE SECOND 207
recently been created Earl of Rochester. Of all Tories,
Rochester was the most intolerant and uncompromising.
The moderate members of his party complained that the
whole patronage of the Treasury, while he was First Commis-
sioner there, went to noisy zealots, whose only claim to
promotion was that they were always drinking confusion to
Whiggery, and lighting bonfires to burn the Exclusion Bill.
The Duke of York, pleased with a spirit which so much
resembled his own, supported his brother in law passionately
and obstinately.
The attempts of the rival ministers to surmount and supplant
each other kept the court in incessant agitation. Halifax
pressed the King to summon a Parliament, to grant a general
amnesty, to deprive the Duke of York of all share in the
government, to recall Monmouth from banishment, to break
with Lewis, and to form a close union with Holland on the
principles of the Triple Alliance. The Duke of York, on the
other hand, dreaded the meeting of a Parliament, regarded the
vanquished Whigs with undiminished hatred, still flattered
himself that the design formed fourteen years before at Dover
might be accomplished, daily represented to his brother the
impropriety of suffering one who was at heart a Republican to
hold the Privy Seal, and strongly recommended Rochester for
the great place of Lord Treasurer.
While the two factions were struggling, Godolphin, cautious,
silent, and laborious, observed a neutrality between them.
Sunderland, with his usual restless perfidy, intrigued against
them both. He had been turned out of oflSce in disgrace
for having voted in favour of the Exclusion Bill, but had made
his peace by employing the good offices of the Duchess of
Portsmouth and by cringing to the Duke of York, and was
once more Secretary of State.
Nor was Lewis negligent or inactive. Every thing at that
moment favoured his designs. He had nothing to apprehend
from the German empire, which was then contending against
the Turks on the Danube. Holland could not, unsupported,
venture to oppose him. He was therefore at liberty to indulge
his ambition and insolence without restraint. He seized Dix-
mude and Courtray. He bombarded Luxemburg. He exacted
from the republic of Genoa the most humiliating submissions.
The power of France at that time reached a higher point than
it ever before or ever after attained, during the ten centuries
which separated the reign of Charlemagne and the reign of
Napoleon. It was not easy to say where her acquisitions
208 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
would stop, if only England could be kept in a state of
vassalage. The first object of the court of Versailles was
therefore to prevent the calling of a Parliament and the
reconciliation of English parties. For this end bribes, promises,
and menaces were unsparingly employed. Charles was some-
times allured by the hope of a subsidy, and sometimes
frightened by being told that, if he convoked the Houses, the
secret articles of the treaty of Dover should be published.
Several Privy Councillors were bought ; and attempts were
made to buy Halifax, but in vain. When he had been found
incorruptible, all the art and influence of the French embassy
were employed to drive him from office : but his polished wit
and his various accomplishments had made him so agreeable
to his master, that the design failed.*
Halifax was not content with standing on the defensive. He
openly accused Rochester of malversation. An inquiry took
place. It appeared that forty thousand pounds had been lost
to the public by the mismanagement of the First Lord of the
Treasury. In consequence of this discovery he was not only
forced to relinquish his hopes of the white staff, but was
removed from the direction of the finances to the more
dignified but less lucrative and important post of Lord Presi-
dent. " I have seen people kicked down stairs," said Halifax,
" but my Lord Rochester is the first person that I ever saw
kicked up stairs." Godolphin, now a peer, became First
Commissioner of the Treasury.
Still, however, the contest continued. The event depended
wholly on the will of Charles ; and Charles could not come to
a decision. In his perplexity he promised everything to every-
body. He would stand by France : he would break with
France : he would never meet another Parliament : he would
order writs for a Parliament to be issued ' without delay. He
assured the Duke of York that Halifax should be dismissed
from office, and Halifax that the Duke should be sent to
Scotland. In public he affected implacable resentment against
* Lord Preston, who was envoy at Paris, wrote thence to Halifax as
follows : — " I find that your lordship lies still under the same misfortune of
being no favourite to this court ; and Monsieur Barillon dare not do you
the honour to shine upon you, since his master frowneth. They know very
well your lordship's qualifications, which make them fear and consequently
hate you : and be assured, my lord, if all their strength can send you to
Rufford, it shall be employed for that end. Two things, I hear, they par-
ticularly object against you, your secrecy, and your being incapable of being
corrupted. Against these two things I know they have declared." The
date of the letter is October 5. N. s. 1683.
ENGLAND IN 1 685 209
Monmouth, and in private conveyed to Monmouth assurances
of unalterable affection. How long, if the King's life had been
protracted, his hesitation might have lasted, and what would
have been his resolve, can only be conjectured. Early in the
year 1685, while hostile parties were anxiously awaiting his
determination, he died, and a new scene opened. In a few
months the excesses of the government obliterated the impres-
sion which had been made on the public mind by the excesses
of the opposition. The violent reaction which had laid the
Whig party prostrate was followed by a still more violent
reaction in the opposite direction ; and signs not to be
mistaken indicated that the great conflict between the prerog-
atives of the crown and the privileges of the Parliament, was
about to be brought to a final issue.
CHAPTER HI
I INTEND, in this chapter, to give a description of the state
in which England was at the time when the crown passed from
Charles the Second to his brother. Such a description, com-
posed from scanty and dispersed materials, must necessarily be
very imperfect. Yet it may perhaps correct some false notions
which would make the subsequent narrative uninteUigible or
uninstructive.
If we would study with profit the history of our ancestors,
we must be constantly on our guard against that delusion
which the well known names of families, places, and offices
naturally produce, and must never forget that the country of
which we read was a very different country from that in which
we live. In every experimental science there is a tendency
towards perfection. In every human being there is a wish to
ameliorate his own condition. These two principles have often
sufficed, even when counteracted by great pubfic calamities
and by bad institutions, to carry civilisation rapidly forward.
No ordinary misfortune, no ordinary misgovernment, will do
so much to make a nation wretched, as the constant progress
of physical knowledge and the constant effort of every man to
better himself will do to make a nation prosperous. It has
often been found that profuse expenditure, heavy taxation,
absurd commercial restrictions, corrupt tribunals, disastrous
2IO HISTORY OF ENGLAND
wars, seditions, persecutions, conflagrations, inundations, have
not been able to destroy capital so fast as the exertions of
private citizens have been able to create it. It can easily be
proved that, in our own land, the national wealth has, during
at least six centuries, been almost uninterruptedly increasing ;
that it was greater under the Tudors than under the Planta-
genets ; that it was greater under the Stuarts than under the
Tudors ; that, in spite of battles, sieges, and confiscations, it
was greater on the day of the Restoration than on the day
when the Long Parliament met ; that, in spite of maladminis-
tration, of extravagance, of public bankruptcy, of tvvo costly
and unsuccessful wars, of the pestilence and of the fire, it was
greater on the day of the death of Charles the Second than on
the day of his Restoration. This progress, having continued
during many ages, became at length, about the middle of the
eighteenth century, portentously rapid, and has proceeded,
during the nineteenth, with accelerated velocity. In con-
sequence partly of our geographical and partly of our moral
position, we have, during several generations, been exempt
from evils which have elsewhere impeded the efforts and
destroyed the fruits of industry. While every part of the
Continent, from Moscow to Lisbon, has been the theatre of
bloody and devastating wars, no hostile standard has been seen
here but as a trophy. While revolutions have taken place all
around us, our government has never once been subverted by
violence. During a hundred years there has been in our
island no tumult of sufficient importance to be called an insur-
rection. The law has never been borne down either by popular
fury or by regal tyranny. Public credit has been held sacred.
The administration of justice has been pure. Even in times
which might by Englishmen be justly called evil times, we have
enjoyed what almost every other nation in the world would
have considered as an ample measure of civil and religious
freedom. Every man has felt entire confidence that the state
would protect him in the possession of what had been earned
by his diligence and hoarded by his selfdenial. Under the
benignant influence of peace and liberty, science has flourished,
and has been applied to practical purposes on a scale never
before known. The consequence is that a change to which the
history of the old world furnishes no parallel has taken place
in our country. Could the England of 1685 be, by some
magical process, set before our eyes, we should not know one
landscape in a hundred or one building in ten thousand. The
country gentleman would not recognise his own fields. The
ENGLAND IN 1 685 211
inhabitant of the town would not recognise his own street.
Everything has been changed, but the great features of nature,
and a few massive and durable works of human art. We
might find out Snowdon and Windermere, the Cheddar Cliffs
and Beachy Head. We might find out here and there a
Norman minster, or a castle which witnessed the wars of the
Roses. But, with such rare exceptions, everything would be
strange to us. Many thousands of square miles which are
now rich corn land and meadow, intersected by green hedge-
rows, and dotted with villages and pleasant country seats,
would appear as moors overgrown with furze, or fens aban-
doned to wild ducks. We should see straggling huts built of
wood and covered with thatch, where we now see manufacturing
towns and seaports renowned to the farthest ends of the world.
The capital itself would shrink to dimensions not much
exceeding those of its present suburb on the south of the
Thames. Not less strange to us would be the garb and
manners of the people, the furniture and the equipages, the
interior of the shops and dwellings. Such a change in the state
of a nation seems to be at least as well entitled to the notice of
a historian as any change of the dynasty or of the ministry.
One of the first objects of an inquirer, who wishes to form a
correct notion of the state of a community at a given time,
must be to ascertain of how many persons that community then
consisted. Unfortunately the population of England in 1685
cannot be ascertained with perfect accuracy. For no great state
had then adopted the wise course of periodically numbering
the people. All men were left to conjecture for themselves ;
and, as they generally conjectured without examining facts,
and under the influence of strong passions and prejudices,
their guesses were often ludicrously absurd. Even intelligent
Londoners ordinarily talked of London as containing several
millions of souls. It was confidently asserted by many that,
during the thirty-five years which had elapsed between the
accession of Charles the First and the Restoration, the popu-
lation of the city had increased by two millions." Even while
the ravages of the plague and fire were recent, it was the
fashion to say that the capital still had a million and a half of
inhabitants.t Some persons, disgusted by these exaggerations,
* Observations on the Bills of Mortality, by Captain John Graunt (Sii
William Petty), chap. xi.
t " She doth comprehend
Full fifteen hundred thousand which do spend
Their days within."
Great Britain's Beauty, 1671.
212 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
ran violently into the opposite extreme. Thus Isaac Vossius,
a man of undoubted parts and learning, strenuously maintained
that there were only two millions of human beings in England,
Scotland, and Ireland taken together.*
We are not, however, left without the means of correcting
the wild blunders into which some minds were hurried by
national vanity and others by a morbid love of paradox.
There are extant three computations which seem to be entitled
to peculiar attention. They are entirely independent of each
other : they proceed on different principles ; and yet there is
little difference in the results.
One of these computations was made in the year 1696 by
Gregory King, Lancaster herald, a political arithmetician of
great acuteness and judgment. The basis of his calculations
was the number of houses returned in 1690 by the officers who
made the last collection of the hearth money. The conclusion
at which he arrived was that the population of England was
nearly five millions and a half.t
About the same time King William the Third was desirous
to ascertain the comparative strength of the religious sects into
which the community was divided. An inquiry was instituted;
and reports were laid before him from all the dioceses of the
realm. According to these reports the number of his English
subjects must have been about five million two hundred
thousand. J
Lastly, in our own days, Mr. Finlaison, an actuary of
eminent skill, subjected the ancient parochial registers to all
the tests which the modern improvements in statistical science
enabled him to apply. His opinion was, that, at the close of
the seventeenth century, the population of England was a little
under five million two hundred thousand souls. §
Of these three estimates, framed without concert by different
persons from different sets of materials, the highest, which is
that of King, does not exceed the lowest, which is that of
* Isaac Vossius, De Magnitudine Urbium Sinarum, 1685. Vossius, as
we learn from St. Evremond, talked on this subject oftener and longer
than fashionable circles cared to listen.
t King's Natural and Political Observations, 1696. This valuable
treatise, which ought to be read as the author wrote it, and not as garbled
by Davenant, will be found in some editions of Chalmers's Estimate.
J Dali-ymple's Appendix to Part II. Book I. The practice of reckoning
the population by sects was long fashionable. Gulliver says of the King of
Brobdingnag, " He laughed at my odd arithmetic, as he was pleased to
call it, in reckoning the numbers of our people by a computation drawn
from the several sects among us in religion and politics. "
§ Preface to the Population Returns of 183 1.
ENGLAND IN 1685 213
Finlaison, by one twelfth. We may, therefore, with confidence
pronounce that, when James the Second reigned, England
contained between five miUion and five million five hundred
thousand inhabitants. On the very highest supposition she
then had less than one third of her present population, and
less than three times the population which is now collected in
her tiigantic capital.
The increase of the people has been great in every part ot
the kingdom, but generally much greater in the northern than
in the southern shires. In truth a large part of the country
beyond Trent was, down to the eighteenth century, in a state
of barbarism. Physical and moral causes had concurred to
prevent civilisation from spreading to that region. The air
was inclement ; the soil was generally such as required skilful
and industrious cultivation ; and there could be little skill or
industry in a tract which was often the theatre of war, and
which, even when there was nominal peace, was constantly
desolated by bands of Scottish piarauders. Before the union
of the two British crowns, and long after that union, there was
as great a difference between Middlesex and Northumberland
as there now is between Massachusetts and the settlements of
those squatters who, far to the west of the Mississippi, administer
a rude justice with the rifle and the dagger. In the reign of
Charles the Second, the traces left by ages of slaughter and
pillage were still distinctly perceptible, many miles south of the
Tweed, in the face of the country and in the lawless manners
of the people. There was still a large class of mosstroopers,
whose calling was to plunder dwellings and to drive away
whole herds of cattle. It was found necessary, soon after the
Restoration, to enact laws of great severity for the prevention
of these outrages. The magistrates of Northumberland and
Cumberland were authorised to raise bands of armed men for
the defence of property and order ; and provision was made
for meeting the expense of these levies by local taxation.*
The parishes were required to keep bloodhounds for the
purpose, of hunting the freebooters. Many old men who were
living in the middle of the eighteenth century could well
remember the time when those ferocious dogs were common. f
Yet, even with such auxiliaries, it was often found impossible
to track the robbers to their retreats among the hills and
* Statutes 14 Car. II. c. 22. ; 18 & 19 Car. II. c. 3. ; 29 & 30 Car. II.
c. 2.
t Nicholson and Bourne, Discourse on the Ancient State of the Border,
1777.
214 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
morasses. For the geography of that wild country was very
imperfectly known. Even after the accession of George the
Third, the path over the fells from Borrowdale to Ravenglas
was still a secret carefully kept by the dalesmen, some of whom
had probably in their youth escaped from the pursuit of
justice by that road.* The seats of the gentry and the larger
farmhouses were fortified. Oxen were penned at night beneath
the overhanging battlements of the residence, which was known
by the name of Peel. The inmates slept with arms at their
sides. Huge stones and boiling water were in readiness to
crush and scald the plunderer who might venture to assail the
little garrison. No traveller ventured into that country with-
out making his will. The Judges on circuit, with the whole
body of barristers, attorneys, clerks, and serving men, rode on
horseback from Newcastle to Carlisle, armed and escorted by
a strong guard under the command of the Sheriffs. It was
necessary to carry provisions ; for the country was a wilderness
which afforded no supplies. , The spot where the cavalcade
halted to dine, under an immense oak, is not yet forgotten.
The irregular vigour with which criminal justice was adminis-
tered shocked observers whose life had been passed in more
tranquil districts. Juries, animated by hatred and by a sense
of common danger, convicted housebreakers and cattle stealers
with the promptitude of a court martial in a mutiny ; and the
convicts were hurried by scores to the gallows, t Within the
memory of some whom this generation has seen, the sportsman
who wandered in pursuit of game to the sources of the Tyne
found the heaths round Keeldar Castle peopled by a race
scarcely less savage than the Indians of California, and heard
with surprise the half naked women chaunting a wild measure,
while the men with brandished dirks danced a war dance. J
Slowly and with difficulty peace was established on the
border. In the train of peace came industry and all the arts
of life. Meanwhile it was discovered that the regions north of
the Trent possessed in their coal beds a source of wealth far
more precious than the gold mines of Peru. It was found
that, in the neighbourhood of these beds, almost every manu-
facture might be most profitably carried on. A constant stream
of emigrants began to roll northward. It appeared by the
* Gray's Journal of a Tour in the Lakes, Oct. 3, 1769.
t North's Life of Guildford. Hutchinson's History of Cumberland,
parish of Brampton.
X See Sir Walter Scott's Journal, Oct. 7, 1827, in his Life by Mr.
Lockhart.
ENGLAND IN 1685 215
returns of 1841 that the ancient archiepiscopal province of
York contained two sevenths of the population of England.
At the time of the Revolution that province was believed to
contain only one seventh of the population.* In Lancashire
the number of inhabitants appears to have increased ninefold,
while in Norfolk, Suffolk, and Northamptonshire it has hardly
doubled.!
Of the taxation we can speak with more confidence and
precision than of the population. The revenue of England,
when Charles the Second died, was small, when compared with
the resources which she even then possessed, or with the sums
which were raised by the governments of the neighbouring
countries. It had, from the time of the Restoration, been
almost constantly increasing : yet it was little more than three
fourths of the revenue of the United Provinces, and was
hardly one fifth of the revenue of France.
The most important head of receipt was the excise, which,
in the last year of the reign of Charles, produced five hundred
and eighty-five thousand pounds, clear of all deductions. The
net proceeds of the customs amounted in the same year to
five hundred and thirty thousand pounds. These burdens did
not lie very heavy on the nation. The tax on chimneys,
though less productive, raised far louder murmurs. The dis-
content excited by direct imposts is, indeed, almost always out
of proportion to the quantity of money which they bring into
the Exchequer ; and the tax on chimneys was, even among
direct imposts, peculiarly odious : for it could be levied only
by means of domiciliary visits ; and of such visits the English
have always been impatient to a degree which the people of
other countries can but faintly conceive. The poorer house-
holders were frequently unable to pay their hearth money to
the day. When this happened, their furniture was distrained
without mercy : for the tax was farmed ; and a farmer of taxes
is, of all creditors, proverbially the most rapacious. The
collectors were loudly accused of performing their unpopular
duty with harshness and insolence. It was said that, as soon
as they appeared at the threshold of a cottage, the children
began to wail, and the old women ran to hide their earthen-
* Dalrymple, Appendix to Part II. Book I. The returns of the hearth
money lead to nearly the same conclusion. The hearths in the province of
York were not a sixth of the hearths of England.
t I do not, of course, pretend to strict accuracy here ; but I believe that
whoever will take the trouble to compare the last returns of hearth money
in the reign of William the Third with the census of 1S41, will come to a
conclusion not very different from mine.
H34
2l6 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
ware. Nay, the single bed of a poor family had sometimes
been carried away and sold. The net annual receipt from this
tax was two hundred thousand pounds.*
When to the three great sources of income which have been
mentioned we add the royal domains, then far more extensive
than at present, the first fruits and tenths, which had not yet
been surrendered to the Church, the Duchies of Cornwall and
Lancaster, the forfeitures and the fines, we shall find that the
whole annual revenue of the crown may be fairly estimated at
about fourteen hundred thousand pounds. Of this revenue
part was hereditary : the rest had been granted to Charles for
life ; and he was at liberty to lay out the whole exactly as
he thought fit. Whatever he could save by retrenching the
expenditure of the public departments was an addition to his
privy purse. Of the Post Office, more will hereafter be said.
The profits of that establishment had been appropriated by
Parliament to the Duke of York.
The King's revenue was, or rather ought to have been,
charged with the payment of about eighty thousand pounds a
year, the interest of the sum fraudulently detained in the
Exchequer by the Cabal. While Danby was at the head of the
finances, the creditors had received their dividends, though
not with the strict punctuality of modern times : but those who
had succeeded him at the Treasury had been less expert, or
less solicitous to maintain public faith. Since the victory won
by the court over the Whigs, not a farthing had been paid ;
and no redress was granted to the sufferers, till a new dynasty
had established a new system. There can be no greater error
than to imagine that the device of meeting the exigencies of
* There are in the Pepysian Library, some ballads of that age on the
chimney money. I will give a specimen or two : —
" The good old dames, whenever they the chimney man espied,
Unto their nooks they haste away, their pots and pipkins hide.
There is not one old dame in ten, and search the nation through,
But, if you talk of chimney men, will spare a curse or two."
Again,
" Like plundering soldiers they'd enter the door,
'■ And make a distress on the goods of the poor,
While frighted poor children distractedly cried :
This nothing abated their insolent pride."
In the British Museum there are doggrel verses composed on the same
subject and in the same spirit :
" Or, if through poverty it be not paid.
For cnxelty to tear away the single bed,
On which the poor man rests his weary head,
At once deprives him of his rest and bread."
I take this opportunity, the first which occurs, of acknowledging most
gratefully the kind and liberal manner in which the Master and Vicem aster
of Magdalene College, Cambridge, gave me access to the valuable collec-
tions of Pepys.
ENGLAND IN 1 685 217
the State by loans was imported into our island by William the
Third. From a period of immemorial antiquity it had been
the practice of every English government to contract debts.
What the Revolution introduced was the practice of honestly
paying them.*
By plundering the public creditor, it was possible to make
an income of about fourteen hundred thousand pounds, with
some occasional help from France, support the necessary charges
of the government and the wasteful expenditure of the court.
For that load which pressed most heavily on the finances of
the great continental states was here scarcely felt. In France,
Germany, and the Netherlands, armies, such as Henry the
Fourth and Philip the Second had never employed in time of
war, were kept up in the midst of peace. Bastions and
ravelins were everywhere rising, constructed on principles un-
known to Parma or Spinola. Stores of artillery and ammunition
were accumulated, such as even Richelieu, whom the preceding
generation had regarded as a worker of prodigies, would have
pronounced fabulous. No man could journey many leagues in
those countries without hearing the drums of a regiment on
march, or being challenged by the sentinels on the drawbridge
of a fortress. In our island, on the contrary, it was possible to
live long and to travel far, without being once reminded, by
any martial sight or sound, that the defence of nations had
become a science and a calling. The majority of Englishmen
who were under twenty-five years of age had probably never
seen a company of regular soldiers. Of the cities which, in the
civil war, had valiantly repelled hostile armies, scarce one was
now capable of sustaining a siege. The gates stood open
night and day. The ditches were dry. The ramparts had
been suffered to fall into decay, or were repaired only that the
townsfolk might have a pleasant walk on summer evenings.
Of the old baronial keeps many had been shattered by the
cannon of Fairfax and Cromwell, and lay in heaps of ruin,
overgrown with ivy. Those which remained had lost their
martial character, and were now rural palaces of the aristocracy.
The moats were turned into preserves of carp and pike. The
mounds were planted with fragrant shrubs, through which
spiral walks ran up to summer houses adorned with mirrors
and paintings!. On the capes of the sea coast, and on many
* My chief authorities for this financial statement will be found in the
Commons' Journals, March i, and March 20, i68f.
t See for example the picture of the mound at Marlborough, in Stukeley's
Itinerarium Curiosum.
2 I 8 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
inland hills, were still seen tall posts, surmounted by barrels.
Once those barrels had been filled with pitch. Watchmen had
been set round them in seasons of danger ; and, within a few
hours after a Spanish sail had been discovered in the Channel,
or after a thousand Scottish mosstroopers had crossed the
Tweed, the signal fires v/ere blazing fifty miles off, and v/hole
counties were rising in arms. But many years had now elapsed
since the beacons had been lighted ; and they were regarded
rather as curious relics of ancient manners than as parts of a
machinery necessary to the safety of the state.*
The only army which the law recognised was the militia.
That force had been remodelled by two Acts of Parliament
passed shortly after the Restoration. Every man who
possessed five hundred pounds a year derived from land, or
six thousand pounds of personal estate, was bound to provide,
equip, and pay, at his own charge, one horseman. Every man
who had fifty pounds a year derived from land, or six hundred
pounds of personal estate, was charged in like manner with
one pikeman or musketeer. Smaller proprietors were joined
together in a kind of society, for which our language does not
afford a special name, but which an Athenian would have
called a Synteleia; and each society was required to furnish,
according to its means, a horse soldier or a foot soldier. The
whole number of cavalry and infantry thus maintained was
popularly estimated at a hundred and thirty thousand men.t
The King was, by the ancient constitution of the realm, and
by the recent and solemn acknowledgment of both Houses of
Parliament, the sole Captain General of this large force. The
Lord Lieutenants and their Deputies held the command under
him, and appointed meetings for drilhng and inspection. The
time occupied by such meetings, however, was not to exceed
fourteen days in one year. The Justices of the Peace were
authorised to inflict slight penalties for breaches of discipline.
Of the ordinary cost no part was paid by the crown : but,
when the trainbands were called out against an enemy, their
subsistence became a charge on the general revenue of the
state, and they were subject to the utmost rigour of martial
law.
There were those who looked on the militia with no friendly
eye. Men who had travelled much on the Continent, who
had marvelled at the stern precision with which every sentinel
* Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684.
t 13 & 14 Car. II. c. 3 ; 15 Car. II. c. 4. Chamberlayne's State of
England, 1684,
ENGLAND IN 1685 2 I <)
moved and spoke in the citadels built by Vauban, who had
seen the mighty armies which poured along all the roads of
Germany to chase the Ottoman from the gates of Vienna, and
who had been dazzled by the well ordered pomp of the house-
hold troops of Lewis, sneered much at the way in which the
peasants of Devonshire and Yorkshire marched and wheeled,
shouldered muskets and ported pikes. The enemies of the
liberties and religion of England looked with aversion on a
force which could not, without extreme risk, be employed
against those liberties and that religion, and missed no oppor-
tunity of throwing ridicule on the rustic soldiery.* Enlightened
patriots, when they contrasted these rude levies with the bat-
talions which, in time of war, a few hours might bring to the
coast of Kent or Sussex, were forced to acknowledge that,
dangerous as it might be to keep up a permanent military
establishment, it might be more dangerous still to stake the
honour and independence of the country on the result of a
contest between ploughmen officered by Justices of the Peace,
and veteran warriors led by Marshals of France. In Parlia-
ment, however, it was necessary to express such opinions with
some reserve ; for the militia was an institution eminently
popular. Every reflection thrown on it excited the indignation
of both the great parties in the state, and especially of that
party which was distinguished by peculiar zeal for monarchy
and for the Anglican Church. The array of the counties was
commanded almost exclusively by Tory noblemen and gentle-
men. They were proud of their military rank, and considered
an insult offered to the service to which they belonged as
offered to themselves. They were also perfectly aware that
whatever was said against a militia was said in favour of a
standing army ; and the name of standing army was hateful
to them. One such army had held dominion m England ;
and under that dominion the King had been murdered, the
nobility degraded, the landed gentry plundered, the Church
persecuted. There was scarce a rural grandee who could not
* Dryden, in his Cymon and Iphigenia, expressed, with his usual keen-
ness and energy, the sentiments which had been fashionable among the
sycophants of James the Second :—
" The country rings around with loud alarms,
And raw in fields the rude militia swarms ;
Mouths without hands, maintained at vast expense,
In peace a charge, in war a weak defence.
Stout once a month they march, a blustering band.
And ever, but in time of need, at hand.
This was the morn when, issuing on the guard,
Drawn up in rank and file, they stood prepared
Of seeming arms to make a short essay.
Then hasten to be drunk, the business of the day."
220 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
tell a Story of wrongs and insults suffered by himself, or by his
father, at the hands of the parliamentary soldiers. One old
Cavalier had seen half his manor house blown up. The
hereditary elms of another had been hewn down. A third
could never go into his parish church without being reminded
by the defaced scutcheons and headless statues of his ancestry,
that Oliver's redcoats had once stabled their horses there. The
consequence was that those very Royalists, who were most ready
to fight for the King themselves, were the last persons whom
he could venture to ask for the means of hiring regular troops.
Charles, however, had, a few months after his restoration,
begun to form a small standing army. He felt that, without
some better protection than that of the trainbands and beef-
eaters, his palace and person would hardly be secure, in the
vicinity of a great city swarming with warlike Fifth Monarchy
men who had just been disbanded. He therefore, careless and
profuse as he was, contrived to spare from his pleasures a sum
sufficient to keep up a body of guards. With the increase of
trade and of public wealth his revenues increased ; and he
was thus enabled, in spite of the occasional murmurs of the
Commons, to make gradual additions to his regular forces.
One considerable addition was made a few months before the
close of his reign. The costly, useless, and pestilential settle-
ment of Tangier was abandoned to the barbarians who dwelt
around it ; and the garrison, consisting of one regiment of
horse and two regiments of foot, was brought to England.
The little army thus formed by Charles the Second was the
germ of that great and renowned army which has, in the
present century, marched triumphant into Madrid and Paris,
into Canton and Candahar. The Life Guards, who now form
two regiments, were then distributed into three troops, each of
which consisted of two hundred carabineers, exclusive of
officers. This corps, to which the safety of the King and royal
family was confided, had a very peculiar character. Even the
privates were designated as gentlemen of the Guard. Many of
them were of good families, and had held commissions in the
civil war. Their pay was far higher than that of the most
favoured regiment of our time, and would in that age have
been thought a respectable provision for the younger son of
a country squire. Their fine horses, their rich housings, their
cuirasses, and their buff coats adorned with ribands, velvet, and
gold lace, made a splendid appearance in St. James's Park. A
small body of grenadier dragoons, who came from a lower class
and received lower pay, was attached to each troop. Another
ENGLAND IN 1685 22 1
body of household cavalry distinguished by blue coats and
cloaks, and still called the Blues, was generally quartered in
the neighbourhood of the capital. Near the capital lay also
the corps which is now designated as the first regiment of
dragoons, but which was then the only regiment of dragoons
on the English establishment. It had recently been formed
out of the cavalry who had returned from Tangier. A single
troop of dragoons, which did not form part of any regiment,
was stationed near Berwick, for the purpose of keeping the
peace among the mosstroopers of the border. For this species
of service the dragoon was then thought to be peculiarly
qualified. He has since become a mere horse soldier. But
in the seventeenth century he was accurately described by
Montecuculi as a foot soldier who used a horse only in order
to arrive with more speed at the place where military service
was to he performed.
The household infantry consisted of two regiments, which
were then, as now, called the first regiment of Foot Guards,
and the Coldstream Guards. They generally did duty near
Whitehall and St. James's Palace. As there were then no
barracks, and as, by the Petition of Right, soldiers could not
be quartered on private families, the redcoats filled all the
alehouses of Westminster and the Strand.
There were five other regiments of foot. One of these,
called the Admiral's Regiment, was especially destined to
service on board of the fleet. The remaining four still rank
as the first four regiments of the line. Two of these represented
two brigades which had long sustained on the Continent the
fame of British valour. The first, or Royal regiment, had,
under the great Gustavus, borne a conspicuous part in the
deliverance of Germany. The third regiment, distinguished
by flesh coloured facings, from which it derived the well known
name of the Buff's, had, under Maurice of Nassau, fought not
less bravely for the deliverance of the Netherlands. Both these
gallant bands had at length, after many vicissitudes, been
recalled from foreign service by Charles the Second, and had
been placed on the English establishment.
The regiments which now rank as the second and fourth of
the hne had, in 1685, just returned from Tangier, bringing
with them cruel and licentious habits contracted in a long
course of warfare with the Moors. A few companies of
infantry which had not been regimented lay in garrison at
Tilbury Fort, at Portsmouth, at Plymouth, and at some other
important stations on or near the coast.
222 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
' Since the beginning of the seventeenth century a great
change had taken place in the arms of the infantry. The pike
had been gradually giving place to the musket ; and, at the
close of the reign of Charles the Second, most of his foot were
musketeers. Still, however, there was a large intermixture of
pikemen. Each class of troops was occasionally instructed in
the use of the weapon which peculiarly belonged to the other
class. Every foot soldier had at his side a sword for close
fight. The dragoon was armed like a musketeer, and was also
provided with a weapon which had, during many years, been
gradually coming into use, and which the English then called a
dagger, but which, from the time of our revolution, has been
known among us by the French name of bayonet. The
bayonet seems not to have been so formidable an instrument
of destruction as it has since become ; for it was inserted in
the muzzle of the gun ; and in action much time was lost
while the soldier unfixed his bayonet in order to fire, and fixed
it again in order to charge.
The regular army which was kept up in England at the
beginning of the year 1685 consisted, all ranks included, of
about seven thousand foot, and about seventeen hundred
cavalry and dragoons. The whole charge amounted to about
two hundred and ninety thousand pounds a year, less than a
tenth part of what the military establishment of France then
cost in time of peace. The daily pay of a private in the Life
Guards was four shillings, in the Blues two shillings and six-
pence, in the Dragoons eighteenpence, in the Foot Guards
tenpence, and in the line eightpence. The discipline was lax,
and indeed could not be otherwise. The common law of
England knew nothing of courts martial, and made no
distinction, in time of peace, between a soldier and any other
subject ; nor could the government then venture to ask even
the most loyal Parliament for a Mutiny Bill. A soldier, there-
fore, by knocking down his colonel, incurred only the ordinary
penalties of assault and battery, and by refusing to obey orders,
by sleeping on guard, or by deserting his colours, incurred no
legal penalty at all. Military punishments were doubtless
inflicted during the reign of Charles the Second, but they were
inflicted very sparingly, and in such a manner as not to attract
public notice, or to produce an appeal to the courts of West-
minster Hall.
Such an army as has been described was not very likely to
enslave five millions of Englishmen. It would indeed have
been hardly able to suppress an insurrection in London, if the
ENGLAND IN 1685 223
trainbands of the City had joined the insurgents. Nor could
the King expect that, if a rising took place in England, he
would be able to obtain help from his other dominions. For,
though both Scotland and Ireland supported separate military
establishments, those establishments were not more than
sufficient to keep down the Puritan malecontents of the former
kingdom, and the Popish malecontents of the latter. The
government had, however, an important military resource
which must not be left unnoticed. There were in the pay of
the United Provinces six fine regiments, formerly commanded
by the brave Ossory. Of these regiments three had been
raised in England and three in Scotland, Their native prince
had reserved to himself the power of recalling them, if he
needed their help against a foreign or domestic enemy. In
the meantime they were maintained without any charge to him,
and were kept under an excellent discipline, to which he could
not have ventured to subject them.*
If the jealousy of the Parliament and of the nation made it
impossible for the King to maintain a formidable standing
army, no similar impediment prevented him from making
England the first of maritime powers. Both Whigs and Tories
were ready to applaud every step tending to increase the
efficiency of that force which, while it was the best protection
of the island against foreign enemies, was powerless against
civil liberty. All the greatest exploits achieved within the
memory of that generation by English soldiers had been
achieved in war against English princes. The victories of our
sailors had been won over foreign foes, and had averted havoc
and rapine from our own soil. By at least half the nation the
battle of Naseby was remembered with horror, and the battle
of Dunbar with pride chequered by many painful feelings :
but the defeat of the Armada, and the encounters of Blake with
the Hollanders and Spaniards, were recollected with unmixed
exultation by all parties. Ever since the Restoration, the
Commons, even when most discontented and most parsimonious,
had always been bountiful even to profusion where the interest
of the navy was concerned. It had been represented to them,
while Danby was minister, that many of the vessels in the royal
fleet were old and unfit for sea ; and, although the House was,
* Most of the materials which I have used for this account of the regular
army will be found in the Historical Records of Regiments, published by
command of King William the Fourth, and under the direction of the
Adjutant General. See also Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684 ;
Abridgment of the English Military Discipline, printed by especial
command, 1685 ; Exercise of Foot, by their Majesties' command, 1690.
*H34
224 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
at that time, in no giving mood, an aid of near six hundred
thousand pounds had been granted for the building of thirty
new men of war.
But the liberality of the nation had been made fruitless by
the vices of the government. The list of the King's ships, it is
true, looked well. There were nine first rates, fourteen second
rates, thirty-nine third rates, and many smaller vessels. The
first rates, indeed, were less than the third rates of our time ;
and the third rates would not now rank as very large frigates.
This force, however, if it had been efficient, would in those
days have been regarded by the greatest potentate as formidable.
But it existed only on paper. When the reign of Charles
terminated, his navy had sunk into degradation and decay, such
as would be almost incredible if it were not certified to us by
the independent and concurring evidence of witnesses whose
authority is beyond exception. Pepys, the ablest man in the
English Admiralty, drew up, in the year 1684, a memorial on
the state of his department, for the information of Charles. A
few months later Bonrepaux, the ablest man in the French
Admiralty, having visited England for the especial purpose of
ascertaining her maritime strength, laid the result of his inquiries
before Lewis. The two reports are to the same effect. Bon-
repaux declared that he found everything in disorder and in
miserable condition, that the superiority of the French marine
was acknowledged with shame and envy at Whitehall, and that
the state of our shipping and dockyards was of itself a sufficient
guarantee that we should not meddle in the disputes of Europe.*
Pepys informed his master that the naval administration was a
prodigy of wastefulness, corruption, ignorance, and indolence,
that no estimate could be trusted, that no contract was per-
formed, that no check was enforced. The vessels which the
recent liberality of Parliament had enabled the government to
build, and which had never been out of harbour, had been
made of such wretched timber that they were more unfit to go
to sea than the old hulls which had been battered thirty years
before by Dutch and Spanish broadsides. Some of the new
men of war, indeed, were so rotten that, unless speedily
* I refer to a despatch of Bonrepaux to Seignelay, dated Feb. -^. 1686.
It was transcribed for Mr. Fox from the French archives, during the peace
of Amiens, and, with the other materials brought together by that great
man, was intrusted to me by the kindness of the late Lady Holland, and of
the present Lord Holland. I ought to add that, even in the midst of the
troubles which have lately agitated Paris, I have found no difficulty in
obtaining, from the liberality of the functionaries there, extracts supplying
some chasms in Mr. Fox's collection.
ENGLAND IN 1685 22^
repaired, they would go down at their moorings. The sailors
were paid with so little punctuality that they were glad to find
some usurer who would purchase their tickets at forty per cent,
discount. The commanders who had not powerful friends
at court were even worse treated. Some officers, to whom
large arrears were due, after vainly importuning the govern-
ment during many years, had died for want of a morsel of
bread.
Most of the ships which were afloat were commanded by
men who had not been bred to the sea. This, it is true, was
not an abuse introduced by the government of Charles. No
state, ancient or modern, had, before that time, made a com-
plete separation between the naval and military services. In
the great civilised nations of the old world, Cimon and Lysander,
Pompey and Agrippa, had fought battles by sea as well as by
land. Nor had the impulse which nautical science received
at the close of the fifteenth century produced any material
improvement in the division of labour. At Flodden the right
wing of the victorious army was led by the Admiral of England.
At Jarnac and Moncontour the Huguenot ranks were marshalled
by the Admiral of France. Neither John of Austria, the
conqueror of Lepanto, nor Lord Howard of Effingham, to
whose direction the marine of England was entrusted when the
Spanish invaders were approaching our shores, had received the
education of a sailor. Raleigh, highly celebrated as a naval
commander, had served during many years as a soldier in
France, the Netherlands, and Ireland. Blake had distinguished
himself by his skilful and valiant defence of an inland town
before he humbled the pride of Holland and of Castile on the
ocean. Since the Restoration the same system had been
followed. Great fleets had been entrusted to the direction of
Rupert and Monk ; Rupert, who was renowned chiefly as a hot
and daring cavalry officer, and Monk, who, when he wished his
ship to change her course, moved the mirth of his crew by
calling out, "Wheel to the left ! "
But about this time wise men began to perceive that the
rapid improvement, both of the art of war and of the art of
navigation, made it necessary to draw a line between two
professions which had hitherto been confounded. Either the
command of a regiment or the command of a ship was now a
matter quite sufficient to occupy the attention of a single mind.
In the year 1672 the French government determined to educate
young men of good family from a very early age specially for
the sea service. But the English government, instead of follow-
22 6 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
ing this excellent example, not only continued to distribute
high naval commands among landsmen, but selected for such
commands landsmen who, even on land, could not safely have
been put in any important trust. Any lad of noble birth, any
dissolute courtier for whom one of the King's mistresses would
speak a word, might hope that a ship of the line, and with it
the honour of the country and the lives of hundreds of brave
men, would be committed to his care. It mattered not that he
had never in his life taken a voyage except on the Thames, that
he could not keep his feet in a breeze, that he did not know
the difference between latitude and longitude. No previous
training was thought necessary ; or, at most, he was sent to
make a short trip in a man of war, where he was subjected to no
discipline, where he was treated with marked respect, and
where he lived in a round of revels and amusements. If, in
the intervals of feasting, drinking and gambling, he succeeded
in learning the meaning of a few technical phrases and the
names of the points of the compass, he was fully qualified to
take charge of a threedecker. This is no imaginary descrip-
tion. In 1666, John Sheffield, Earl of Mulgrave, at seventeen
years of age, volunteered to serve at sea against the Dutch.
He passed six weeks on board, diverting himself, as well as he
could, in the society of some young libertines of rank, and
then returned home to take the command of a troop of horse.
After this he was never on the water till the year 1672, when he
again joined the fleet, and was almost immediately appointed
Captain of a ship of eighty-four guns, reputed the finest in the
navy. He was then twenty-three years old, and had not, in the
whole course of his life, been three months afloat. As soon as
he came back from sea he was made Colonel of a regiment of
foot. This is a specimen of the manner in which naval
commands of the highest importance were then given ; and
a favourable specimen ; for Mulgrave, though he wanted ex-
perience, wanted neither parts nor courage. Others were
promoted in the same way who not only were not good officers,
but who were intellectually and morally incapable of ever
becoming good officers, and whose only recommendation was
that they had been ruined by folly and vice. The chief bait
which allured these men into the service was the profit of con-
veying bullion and other valuable commodities from port to
port j for both the Atlantic and the Mediterranean were then
so much infested by pirates from Barbary that merchants were
not willing to trust precious cargoes to any custody but that of
a man of war. A Captain in this way sometimes cleared several
ENGLAND IN 1685 227
thousands of pounds by a short voyage ; and for this lucrative
business he too often neglected the interests of his country and
the honour of his flag, made mean submissions to foreign
powers, disobeyed the most direct injunctions of his superiors,
lay in port when he was ordered to chase a Sallee rover, or ran
with dollars to Leghorn when his instructions directed him to
repair to Lisbon. And all this he did with impunity. The
same interest which had placed him in a post for which he was
unfit maintained him there. No Admiral, bearded by these
corrupt and dissolute minions of the palace, dared to do more
than mutter something about a court martial. If any officer
showed a higher sense of duty than his fellows, he soon found
that he lost money without acquiring honour. One Captain,
who, by strictly obeying the orders of the Admiralty, missed a
cargo which would have been worth four thousand pounds to
him, was told by Charles, with ignoble levity, that he was a
great fool for his pains.
The discipline of the navy was of a piece throughout. As
the courtly Captain despised the Admiralty, he was in turn
despised by his crew. It could not be concealed that he was
inferior in seamanship to every foremast man on board. It
was idle to expect that old sailors, familiar with the hurricanes
of the tropics and with the icebergs of the Arctic Circle, would
pay prompt and respectful obedience to a chief who knew no
more of winds and waves than could be learned in a gilded
barge between Whitehall Stairs and Hampton Court. To
trust such a novice with the working of a ship was evidently
impossible. The direction of the navigation was therefore
taken from the Captain and given to the Master ■ but this
partition of authority produced innumerable inconveniences.
The line of demarcation was not, and perhaps could not be,
drawn with precision. There was therefore constant wrangling.
The Captain, confident in proportion to his ignorance, treated
the Master with lordly contempt. The Master, well aware of the
danger of disobliging the powerful, too often, after a struggle,
yielded against his better judgment ; and it was well if the loss
of ship and crew was not the consequence. In general the
least mischievous of the aristocratical Captains were those
who completely abandoned to others the direction of the
vessels, and thought only of making money and spending it.
The way in which these men lived was so ostentatious and
voluptuous that, greedy as they were of gain, they seldom
became rich. They dressed as if for a gala at Versailles, ate
off plate, drank the richest wines, and kept harams on board,
22 8 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
while hunger and scurvy raged amongst the crews, and while
corpses were daily flung out of the portholes.
Such was the ordinary character of those who were then
called gentlemen Captains. Mingled with them were to be
found, happily for our country, naval commanders of a very
different description, men whose whole life had been passed on
the deep, and who had worked and fought their way from the
lowest offices of the forecastle to rank and distinction. One of
the most eminent of these officers was Sir Christopher Mings,
who entered the service as a cabin boy, who fell fighting
bravely against the Dutch, and whom his crew, weeping and
vowing vengeance, carried to the grave. From him sprang, by
a singular kind of descent, a line of valiant and expert sailors.
His cabin boy was Sir John Narborough ; and the cabin boy
of Sir John Narborough was Sir Cloudesley Shovel. To the
strong natural sense and dauntless courage of this class of men
England owes a debt never to be forgotten. It was by such
resolute hearts that, in spite of much maladministration, and in
spite of the blunders of more courtly admirals, our coasts were
protected and the reputation of our flag upheld during many
gloomy and perilous years. But to a landsman these tar-
paulins, as they were called, seemed a strange and half savage
race. All their knowledge was professional; and their pro-
fessional knowledge was practical rather than scientific. Off
their own element they were as simple as children. Their
deportment was uncouth. There was roughness in their very
good nature; and their talk, where it was not made up of
nautical phrases, was too commonly made up of oaths and
curses. Such were the chiefs in whose rude school were
formed those sturdy warriors from whom Smollet, in the
next age, drew Lieutenant Bowling and Commodore Trunnion.
But it does not appear that there was in the service of any of
the Stuarts a single naval officer such as, according to the
notions of our times, a naval officer ought to be, that is to say,
a man versed in the theory and practice of his calling, and
steeled against all the dangers of battle and tempest, yet of
cultivated mind and polished manners. There were gentlemen
and there were seamen in the navy of Charles the Second.
But the seamen were not gentlemen ; and the gentlemen were
not seamen.
The English navy at that time might, according to the most
exact estimates which have come down to us, have been kept
in an efficient state for three hundred and eighty thousand
pounds a year. Four hundred thousand pounds a year was
ENGLAND IN 1685 229
the sum actually expended, but expended, as we have seen, to
very little purpose. The cost of the French marine was nearly
the same ; the cost of the Dutch marine considerably more.*
The charge of the English ordnance in the seventeenth
century was, as compared with other military and naval charges,
much smaller than at present. At most of the garrisons there
were gunners, and here and there, at an important post, an
engineer was to be found. But there was no regiment of
artillery, no brigade of sappers and miners, no college in which
young soldiers could learn the scientific part of war. The
difificulty of moving field pieces was extreme. AVhen a few
years later, William marched from Devonshire to London, the
apparatus which he brought with him, though such as had long
been in constant use on the Continent, and such as would
now be regarded at Woolwich as rude and cumbrous, excited
in our ancestors an admiration resembling that which the
Indians of America felt for the Castilian harquebusses. The
stock of gunpowder kept in the English forts and arsenals was
boastfully mentioned by patriotic writers as something which
might well impress neighbouring nations with awe. It
amounted to fourteen or fifteen thousand barrels, about a
twelfth of the quantity which it is now thought necessary to
have always in store. The expenditure under the head of
ordnance was on an average a little above sixty thousand
pounds a year.f
The whole effective charge of the army, navy, and ordnance,
was about seven hundred and fifty thousand pounds. The
noneffective charge, which is now a heavy part of our public
burdens, can hardly be said to have existed. A very small
number of naval ofificers, who were not employed in the public
service, drew half pay. No Lieutenant was on the list, nor any
* My information respecting the condition of the navy, at this time, is
chiefly derived from Pepys. His report, presented to Charles the Second
in May 1684, has never, I believe, been printed. The manuscript is at
Magdalene College, Cambridge. At Magdalene College is also a valuable
manuscript containing a detailed account of the maritime establishments ot
the country in December 1684. Pepys's "Memoirs relating to the State
of the Royal Navy for Ten Years, determined December 168S," and his
diary and correspondence during his mission to Tangier, are in print. I
have made large use of them. See also Sheffield's Memoirs, Teonge's
Diary, Aubrey's Life of Monk, the Life of Sir Cloudesley Shovel, 1 70S,
Commons' Journals, March I and March 20, l6S|.
t Chamberlayne's Stale of England, 1684 ; Commons' Journals,
March I and March 20, 168^. In 1833, it was determined, after full
enquiry, that a hundred and seventy thousand barrels of gunpowder should
constantly be kept in store ; and this rule is still observed.
230 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Captain who had not commanded a ship of the first or second
rate. As the country then possessed only seventeen ships of
the first and second rate that had ever been at sea, and as
a large proportion of the persons who had commanded such
ships had good posts on shore, the expenditure under this head
must have been small indeed.* In the army, half pay was
given merely as a special and temporary allowance to a small
number of officers belonging to two regiments, which were
peculiarly situated.! Greenwich Hospital had not been
founded. Chelsea Hospital was building : but the cost of
that institution was defrayed partly by a deduction from the
pay of the troops, and partly by private subscription. The
King promised to contribute only twenty thousand pounds
for architectural expenses, and five thousand a year for the
maintenance of the invalids. | It was no part of the plan
that there should be outpensioners. The whole noneffective
charge, military and naval, can scarcely have exceeded ten
thousand pounds a year. It now exceeds ten thousand pounds
a day.
Of the expense of civil government only a small portion was
defrayed by the crown. The great majority of the functionaries
whose business was to administer justice and preserve order,
either gave their services to the public gratuitously, or were
remunerated in a manner which caused no drain on the
revenue of the state. The sheriffs, mayors, and aldermen of
the towns, the country gentlemen who were in the commission
of the peace, the headboroughs, bailiffs, and petty constables,
cost the king nothing. The superior courts of law were chiefly
supported by fees.
Our relations with foreign courts had been put on the most
economical footing. The only diplomatic agent who had the
title of Ambassador resided at Constantinople, and was partly
supported by the Turkey Company. Even at the court of
Versailles England had only an Envoy ; and she had not even
an Envoy at the Spanish, Swedish, and Danish courts. The
whole expense under this head cannot, in the last year of the
reign of Charles the Second, have much exceeded twenty
thousand pounds. §
* It appears from the records of the Admiralty, that Flag officers were
allowed half pay in 1668, Captains of first and second rates not tiU
1674.
t Warrant in the War Office Records, dated March 26, 1678.
+ Evelyn's Diary, Jan. 27, 1682. I have seen a privy seal, dated May
17, 1683, which confirms Evelyn's testimony.
§ James the Second sent Envoys to Spain, Sweden, and Denmark ; yet
ENGLAND IN 1 685 23 I
In this frugality there was nothing laudable. Charles was,
as usual, niggardly in the wrong place, and munificent in the
wrong place. The public service was starved that courtiers
might be pampered. The expense of the navy, of the ordnance,
of pensions to needy old officers, of missions to foreign courts,
must seem small indeed to the present generation. But the
personal favourites of the sovereign, his ministers, and the
creatures of those ministers, were gorged with public money.
Their salaries and pensions, when compared with the incomes
of the nobility, the gentry, the commercial and professional
men of that age, will appear enormous. The greatest estates
in the kingdom then very little exceeded twenty thousand a
year. The Duke of Ormond had twenty-two thousand a
year.* The Duke of Buckingham, before his extravagance
had impaired his great property, had nineteen thousand six
hundred a year.f George Monk, Duke of Albemarle, who
had been rewarded for his eminent services with immense
grants of crown land, and who had been notorious both for
covetousness and for parsimony, left fifteen thousand a year
of real estate, and sixty thousand pounds in money which
probably yielded seven per cent. J These three Dukes were
supposed to be three of the very richest subjects in England.
The Archbishop of Canterbury can hardly have had five
thousand a year. § The average income of a temporal peer
was estimated, by the best informed persons, at about three
thousand a year, the average income of a baronet at nine
hundred a year, the average income of a member of the House
of Commons at less than eight hundred a year. || A thousand
a year was thought a large revenue for a barrister. Two
in his reign the diplomatic expenditure was little more than 30,000/. a
year. See the Commons' Journals, March 20, i68f. Chamberlayne's
State of England, 1684, 1687.
* Carte's Life of Ormond.
t Pepys's Diary, Feb. 14, i66|.
X See the Report of the Bath and Montague case, which was decided
by Lord Keeper Somers, in December, 1693.
§ During three quarters of a year, beginning from Christmas 1689, the
revenues of the see of Canterbury were received by an officer appointed
by the crown. That officer's accounts are now in the British Museum.
(Lansdowne MSS. 8S5.) The gross revenue for the three quarters was
not quite four thousand pounds ; and the difference between the gross
and the net revenue was evidently something considerable.
II King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant on the Balance
of Trade. Sir W. Temple says, " The revenues of a House of Commons
have seldom exceeded four hundred thousand pounds." Memoirs, Third
Part.
232 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
thousand a year was hardly to be made in the Court of King's
Bench, except by the crown lawyers.* It is evident, therefore,
that an official man would have been well paid if he had
received a fourth or fifth part of what would now be an
adequate stipend. In fact, however, the stipends of the
higher class of official men were as large as at present, and
not seldom larger. The Lord Treasurer, for example, had
eight thousand a year, and, when the Treasury was in com-
mission, the junior Lords had sixteen hundred a year each.
The Paymaster of the Forces had a poundage, amounting to
about five thousand a year, on all the money which passed
through his hands. The Groom of the Stole had five thousand
a year, the Commissioners of the Customs twelve hundred a
year each, the Lords of the Bedchamber a thousand a year
each.f The regular salary, however, was the smallest part of
the gains of an official man of that age. From the noblemen
who held the white staff and the great seal, down to the
humblest tidewaiter and ganger, what would now be called
gross corruption was practised without disguise and without
reproach. Titles, places, commissions, pardons, were daily
sold in market overt by the great dignitaries of the realm ; and
every clerk in every department imitated, to the best of his
power, the evil example.
During the last century no prime minister, however powerful,
has become rich in office ; and several prime ministers have
impaired their private fortune in sustaining their public charac-
ter. In the seventeenth century, a statesman who was at the
head of affairs might easily, and without giving scandal,
accumulate in no long time an estate amply sufficient to
support a dukedom. It is probable that the income of the
prime minister, during his tenure of power, far exceeded that
of any other subject. The place of Lord Lieutenant of Ireland
was supposed to be worth forty thousand pounds a year.|
The gains of the Chancellor Clarendon, of Arlington, of
Lauderdale, and of Danby, were enormous. The sumptuous
palace to which the populace of London gave the name of
Dunkirk House, the stately pavilions, the fishponds, the deer
park and the orangery of Euston, the more than Italian luxury
of Ham, with its busts, fountains, and aviaries, were among the
many signs which indicated what was the shortest road to
* Langton's Conversations with Chief Justice Hale, 1672.
t Commons' Journals, April 27, 1689; Chamberlayne's State of England
1684.
± See the Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo.
ENGLAND IN 1685 233
boundless wealth. That is the true explanation of the unscru-
pulous violence with which the statesmen of that day struggled
for office, of the tenacity with which, in spite of vexations,
humiliations and dangers, they clung to it, and of the scandal-
ous compliances to which they stooped in order to retain it.
Even in our own age, formidable as is the power of opinion,
and high as is the standard of integrity, there would be great
risk of a lamentable change in the character of our public
men, if the place of First Lord of the Treasury or Secretary
of State were worth a hundred thousand pounds a year.
Happily for our country the emoluments of the highest class
of functionaries have not only not grown in proportion to the
general growth of our opulence, but have positively diminished.
The fact that the sum raised in England by taxation has, in
a time not exceeding two long lives, been multiplied thirtyfold,
is strange, and may at first sight seem appalling. But those
who are alarmed by the increase of the public burdens may
perhaps be reassured when they have considered the increase
of the public resources. In the year 1685, the value of the
produce of the soil far exceeded the value of all the other
fruits of human industry. Yet agriculture was in what would
now be considered as a very rude and imperfect state. The
arable land and pasture land were not supposed by the best
political arithmeticians of that age to amount to much more
than half the area of the kingdom.* The remainder was
believed to consist of moor, forest, and fen. These computa-
tions are strongly confirmed by the road books and maps of
the seventeenth century. From those books and maps it is
clear that many routes which now pass through an endless
succession of orchards, hayfields, and beanfields, then ran
through nothing but heath, swamp, and warren. t In the
drawings of English landscapes made in that age for the
Grand Duke Cosmo, scarce a hedgerow is to be seen, and
numerous tracts, now rich with cultivation, appear as bare as
* King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant on the Balance
of Trade.
t See the Itinerarium Anglise, 1675, by John Ogilby, Cosmographer
Royal. He describes great part of the lai.d as wood, fen, heath- on both
sides, marsh on both sides. In some of his maps the roads through inclosed
country are marked by lines, and the roads through uninclosed country by
dots. The proportion of uninclosed country, which, if cultivated, must
have been wretchedly cultivated, seems to have been very great. From
Abingdon to Gloucester, for example, a distance of forty or fifty miles,
there was not a single inclosure, and scarcely one inclosure between Biggles-
wade and Lincoln.
2 34 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Salisbury Plain* At Enfield, hardly out of sight of the smoke
of the capital, was a region of five and twenty miles in circum-
ference, which contained only three houses and scarcely any
inclosed fields. Deer, as free as in an American forest, wandered
there by thousands.! It is to be remarked, that wild animals
of large size were then far more numerous than at present.
The last wild boars, indeed, which had been preserved for the
royal diversion, and had been allowed to ravage the cultivated
land with their tusks, had been slaughtered by the exasperated
rustics during the license of the civil war. The last wolf that
has roamed our island had been slain in Scotland a short time
before the close of the reign of Charles the Second. But
many breeds, now extinct or rare, both of quadrupeds and
birds, were still common. The fox, whose life is, in many
counties, held almost as sacred as that of a human being, was
considered as a mere nuisance. Oliver Saint John told the
Long Parliament that Strafford was to be regarded, not as a
stag or a hare, to whom some law was to be given, but as a
fox, who was to be snared by any means, and knocked on the
head without pity. This illustration would be by no means a
happy one, if addressed to country gentlemen of our time :
but in Saint John's days there were not seldom great massacres
of foxes to which the peasantry thronged with all the dogs that
could be mustered : traps were set ; nets were spread ; no
quarter was given ; and to shoot a female with cub was con-
sidered as a feat which merited the gratitude of the neighbour-
hood. The red deer were then as common in Gloucestershire
and Hampshire as they now are among the Grampian Hills.
On one occasion Queen Anne, on her way to Portsmouth, saw
a herd of no less than five hundred. The wild bull with his
white mane was still to be found wandering in a few of the
southern forests. The badger made his dark and tortuous
hole on the side of every hill where the copsewood grew thick.
The wild cats were frequently heard by night wailing round
the lodges of the rangers of Whittlebury and Needwood. The
yellow-breasted martin was still pursued in Cranbourne Chase
for his fur, reputed inferior only to that of the sable. Fen
eagles, measuring more than nine feet between the extremities
of the wings, preyed on fish along the coast of Norfolk. On
all the downs, from the British Channel to Yorkshire, huge
bustards strayed in troops of fifty or sixty, and were often
* Large copies of these highly interesting drawings are in the noble
collection bequeathed by Mr. Grenville to the British Museum,
t Evelyn's Diary, June 2, 1675.
ENGLAND IN 1685 235
hunted with greyhounds. The marshes of Cambridgeshire
and Lincolnshire were covered during some months of every
year by immense clouds of cranes. Some of these races the
progress of cultivation has extirpated. Ot others the numbers
are so much diminished that men crowd to gaze at a specimen
as at a Bengal tiger, or a Polar bear.*
The progress of this great change can nowhere be more
clearly traced than in the Statute Book. The number of
inclosure acts passed since King George the Second came to
the throne exceeds four thousand. The area inclosed under
the authority of those acts exceeds, on a moderate calculation,
ten thousand square miles. How many square miles, which
were formerly uncultivated or ill cultivated, have, during the
same period, been fenced and carefully tilled by the pro-
prietors, without any application to the legislature, can only be
conjectured. But it seems highly probable that a fourth part
of England has been, in the course of a little more than a
century, turned from a wild into a garden.
Even in those parts of the kingdom which at the close of
the reign of Charles the Second were the best cultivated, the
farming, though greatly improved since the civil war, was not
such as would now be thought skilful. To this day no
effectual steps have been taken by public authority for the
purpose of obtaining accurate accounts of the produce of the
English soil. The historian must therefore follow, with some
misgivings, the guidance of those writers on statistics whose
reputation for diligence and fidelity stands highest. At present
an average crop of wheat, rye, barley, oats, and beans, is
supposed considerably to exceed thirty millions of quarters.
The crop of wheat would be thought wretched if it did
not exceed twelve millions of quarters. According to the
computation made in the year 1696 by Gregory King, the
whole quantity of wheat, rye, barley, oats, and beans, then
annually grown in the kingdom, was somewhat less than ten
millions of quarters. The wheat, which was then cultivated
only on the strongest clay, and consumed only by those who
were in easy circumstances, he estimated at less than two
millions of quarters. Charles Davenant, an acute and well
informed though most unprincipled and rancorous politician,
* See White's Selborne ; Bell's History of British Quadrupeds ; Gentle-
man's Recreation, 1686 ; Aubrey's Natural History of Wiltshire, 1685 ;
Morton's History of Northamptonshire, 1712 ; Willoughby's Ornithology,
by Ray, 1678 ; Latham's General Synopsis of Birds ; and Sir Thomas
Browne's Account of Birds found in Norfolk.
2^6 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
differed from King as to some of the items of the account, but
came to nearly the same general conclusions.*
The rotation of crops was very imperfectly understood. It
was known, indeed, that some vegetables lately introduced
into our island, particularly the turnip, afforded excellent
nutriment in winter to sheep and oxen : but it was not yet the
practice to feed cattle in this manner. It was therefore by no
means easy to keep them alive during the season when the
grass is scanty. They were killed and salted in great numbers
at the beginning of the cold weather ; and, during several
months, even the gentry tasted scarcely any fresh animal food,
except game and river fish, which were consequently much
more important articles in housekeeping than at present. It
appears from the Northumberland Household Book that, in
the reign of Henry the Seventh, fresh meat was never eaten
even by the gentlemen attendant on a great Earl, except
during the short interval between Midsummer and Michaelmas.
But in the course of two centuries an improvement had taken
place ; and under Charles the Second it was not till the
beginning of November that families laid in their stock of
salt provisions, then called Martinmas beef.f
The sheep and the ox of that time were diminutive when
compared with the sheep and oxen which are now driven to
our markets. J Our native horses, though serviceable, were
held in small esteem, and fetched low prices. They were
valued, one with another, by the ablest of those who computed
the national wealth, at not more than fifty shillings each.
Foreign breeds were greatly preferred. Spanish jennets were
regarded as the finest chargers, and were imported tor purposes
of pageantry and war. The coaches of the aristocracy were
drawn by grey Flemish mares, which trotted, as it was thought,
with a peculiar grace, and endured better than any cattle
reared in our island the work of dragging a ponderous equipage
over the rugged pavement of London. Neither the modern
dray horse nor the modern race horse was then known. At a
much later period the ancestors of the gigantic quadrupeds,
which all foreigners now class among the chief wonders of
London, were brought from the marshes of Walcheren ; the
ancestors of Childers and Echpse from the sands of Arabia.
* King's Natural and Political Conclusions. Davenant on the Balance
of Trade.
t See the Almanacks of 1684 and 1685.
X See Mr. M'Culloch's Statistical Account of the British Empire, part
III. chap. i. sec. 6.
ENGLAND IN 1685 237
Already, however, there was among our nobility and gentry a
passion for the amusements of the turf. The importance of
improving our studs by an infusion of new blood was strongly
felt ; and with this view a considerable number of barbs had
lately been brought into the country. Two men whose
authority on such subjects was held in great esteem, the Duke
of Newcastle and Sir John Fenwick, pronounced that the
meanest hack ever imported from Tangier would produce a
finer progeny than could be expected from the best sire of our
native breed. They would not readily have believed that a
time would come when the princes and nobles of neighbour-
ing lands would be as eager to obtain horses from England as
ever the English had been to obtain horses from Barbary.*
The increase of vegetable and animal produce, though great,
seems small when compared with the increase of our mineral
wealth. In 1685 the tin of Cornwall, which had, more than
two thousand years before, attracted the Tyrian sails beyond
the pillars of Hercules, was still one of the most valuable sub-
terranean productions of the island. The quantity annually
extracted from the earth was found to be, some years later,
sixteen hundred tons, probably about a third of what it now
is.f But the veins of copper which lie in the same region
were, in the time of Charles the Second, altogether neglected,
nor did any landowner take them into the account in estimat-
ing the value of his property. Cornwall and Wales at present
yield annually near fifteen thousand tons of copper, worth near
a million and a half sterling ; that is to say, worth about twice
as much as the annual produce of all English mines of all
descriptions in the seventeenth century. J The first bed of
rock salt had been discovered not long after the Restoration
in Cheshire, but does not appear to have been worked in that
age. The salt which was obtained by a rude process from
brine pits was held in no high estimation. The pans in w^hich
the manufacture was carried on exhaled a sulphurous stench ;
* King and Davenant as before ; The Duke of Newcastle on Horseman-
ship ; Gentleman's Recreation, 1686. The "dappled Flanders mares"
were marks of greatness in the time of Pope, and even later.
The vulgar proverb, that the grey mare is the better horse, originated, I
suspect, in the preference generally given to the grey mares of Flanders
over the finest coach horses of England.
t See a curious note by Tonkin, in Lord De Dunstanville's edition of
Carew's Survey of Cornwall.
X Borlase's Natural History of Cornwall, 1758. The quantity of
copper now produced, I have taken from parliamentary returns. Dave-
nant, in 1700, estimated the annual produce of all the mines of England
at between seven and eight hundred thousand pounds.
238 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
and, when the evaporation was complete, the substance which
was left was scarcely fit to be used with food. Physicians at-
tributed the scorbutic and pulmonary complaints which were
common among the English to this unwholesome condiment.
It was therefore seldom used by the upper and middle classes ;
and there was a regular and considerable importation from
France. At present our springs and mines not only supply our
own immense demand, but send annually more than seven
hundred millions of pounds of excellent salt to foreign
countries.*
Far more important has been the improvement of our iron
works. Such works had long existed in our island, but had
not prospered, and had been regarded with no favourable eye
by the government and by the public. It was not then tlie
practice to employ coal for smelting the ore ; and the rapid
consumption of wood excited the alarm of politicians. As
early as the reign of Elizabeth there had been loud complaints
that whole forests were cut down for the purpose of feeding
the furnaces : and the parliament had interfered to prohibit
the manufacturers from burning timber. The manufacture
consequently languished. At the close of the reign of Charles
the Second, great part of the iron which was used in the
country was imported from abroad ; and the whole quantity
cast here annually seems not to have exceeded ten thousand
tons. At present the trade is thought to be in a depressed
state if less than a million of tons are produced in a year.f
One mineral, perhaps more important than iron itself,
remains to be mentioned. Coal, though very little used in any
species of manufacture, was already the ordinary fuel in some
districts which were fortunate enough to possess large beds,
and in the capital, which could easily be supplied by water
carriage. It seems reasonable to believe that at least one half
of the quantity then extracted from the pits was consumed in
London. The consumption of London seemed to the writers
of that age enormous, and was often mentioned by them as a
proof of the greatness of the imperial city. They scarcely
hoped to be believed when they affirmed that two hundred and
eighty thousand chaldrons, that is to say, about three hundred
and fifty thousand tons, were, in the last year of the reign of
* Philosophical Transactions, No. 53. Nov. 1669, No. 66. Dec. 1670,
No. 103. May 1674, No. 156. Feb. i68|.
t Yarranton, England's Improvement by Sea and Land, 1677 ; Porter's
Progress of the Nation. See also a remarkably perspicuous history, in
small compass, of the English iron works, in Mr. M'Culloch's Statistical
Account of the British Empire.
ENGLAND IN 1685 239
Charles the Second, brought to the Thames. At present near
three milUon and a half of tons are required yearly by the
metropolis ; and the whole annual produce cannot, on the
most moderate computation, be estimated at less than thirty
millons of tons.*
While these great changes have been in progress, the rent of
land has, as might be expected, been almost constantly rising.
In some districts it has multiplied more than tenfold. In some
it has not more than doubled. It has probably, on the average,
quadrupled.
Of the rent, a large proportion was divided among the
country gentlemen, a class of persons whose position and
character it is most important that we should clearly under-
stand ; for by their influence and by their passions the fate of
the nation was, at several important conjunctures, determined.
We should be much mistaken if we pictured to ourselves the
squires of the seventeenth century as men bearing a close
resemblance to their descendants, the county members and
chairmen of quarter sessions with whom we are familiar. The
modern country gentleman generally receives a liberal educa-
tion, passes from a distinguished school to a distinguished
college, and has every opportunity to become an excellent
scholar. He has generally seen something of foreign countries.
A considerable part of his life has generally been passed in
the capital ; and the refinements of the capital follow him
into the country. There is perhaps no class of dwellings so
pleasing as the rural seats of the English gentry. In the parks
and pleasure grounds, nature, dressed yet not disguised by art,
wears her most alluring form. In the buildings, good sense
and good taste combine to produce a happy union of the
comfortable and the graceful. The pictures, the musical
instruments, the library, would in any other country be con-
sidered as proving the owner to be an eminently polished and
accomplished man. A country gentleman who witnessed the
Revolution was probably in receipt of about a fourth part of
the rent which his acres now yield to his posterity. He was,
therefore, as compared with his posterity, a poor man, and was
generally under the necessity of residing, with little interruption,
on his estate. To travel on the Continent, to maintain an
establishment in London, or even to visit London frequently,
* See Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684, 1687 ; Anglise Metropolis,
1691 ; M'Culloch's Statistical Account of the British Empire, Part III.
chap. ii. (edition of 1847). In 1845 the quantity of coal brought into
London appeared, by the parliamentary returns, to be 3,460,000 tons.
240 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
were pleasures in which only the great proprietors could
indulge. It may be confidently affirmed that of the squires
whose names were then in the Commissions of Peace and
Lieutenancy not one in twenty went to town once in five years,
or had ever in his life wandered so far as Paris. Many lords
of manors had received an education differing little from that
of their menial servants. The heir of an estate often passed
his boyhood and youth at the seat of his family with no better
tutors than grooms and gamekeepers, and scarce attained
learning enough to sign his name to a Mittimus. If he went
to school and to college, he generally returned before he was
twenty to the seclusion of the old hall, and there, unless his
mind were very happily constituted by nature, soon forgot his
academical pursuits in rural business and pleasures. His
chief serious employment was the care of his property. He
examined samples of grain, handled pigs, and, on market days,
made bargains over a tankard with drovers and hop merchants.
His chief pleasures were commonly derived from field sports
and from an unrefined sensuality. His language and pro-
nunciation were such as we should now expect to hear
only from the most ignorant clowns. His oaths, coarse
jests, and scurrilous terms of abuse, were uttered with the
broadest accent of his province. It was easy to discern,
from the first words which he spoke, whether he came
from Somersetshire or Yorkshire. He troubled himself little
about decorating his abode, and, if he attempted decoration,
seldom produced anything but deformity. The litter of a
farmyard gathered under the windows of his bedchamber, and
the cabbages and gooseberry bushes grew close to his hall door.
His table was loaded with coarse plenty ; and guests were
cordially welcomed to it But, as the habit of drinking to
excess was general in the class to which he belonged, and as
his fortune did not enable him to intoxicate large assemblies
daily with claret or canary, strong beer was the ordinary bever-
age. The quantity of beer consumed in those days was indeed
enormous. For beer then was to the middle and lower classes,
not only all that beer now is, but all that wine, tea, and ardent
spirits now are. It was only at great houses, or on great occa-
sions, that foreign drink was placed on the board. The ladies-
of the house, whose business it had commonly been to cook
the repast, retired as soon as the dishes had been devoured,
and left the gentlemen to their ale and tobacco. The coarse
jollity of the afternoon was often prolonged till the revellers
were laid under the table.
ENGLAND IN 1685 24T
It was very seldom that the country gentleman caught
glimpses of the great world ; and what he saw of it tended
rather to confuse than to enlighten his understanding. His
opinions respecting religion, government, foreign countries and
former times, having been derived, not from study, from
observation, or from conversation with enlightened com-
panions, but from such traditions as were current in his own
small circle, were the opinions of a child. He adhered to
them, however, with the obstinacy which is generally found in
ignorant men accustomed to be fed with flattery. His
animosities were numerous and bitter. He hated Frenchmen
and Italians, Scotchmen and Irishmen, Papists and Presby-
terians, Independents and Baptists, Quakers and Jews.
Towards London and Londoners he felt an aversion which
more than once produced important political effects. His
wife and daughter were in tastes and acquirements below a
housekeeper or a stillroom maid of the present day. They
stitched and spun, brewed gooseberry wine, cured marigolds,
and made the crust for the venison pasty.
From this description it might be supposed that the English
esquire of the seventeenth century did not materially differ
from a rustic miller or alehouse keeper of our time. There
are, however, some important parts of his character still to be
noted, which will greatly modify this estimate. Unlettered as
he was and unpolished, he was still in some most important points
a gentleman. He was a member of a proud and powerful
aristocracy, and was distinguished by many both of the good
and of the bad qualities which belong to aristocrats. His
family pride was beyond that of a Talbot or a Howard. He
knew the genealogies and coats of arms of all his neighbours,
and could tell which of them had assumed supporters without
any right, and which of them were so unfortunate as to be great
grandsons of aldermen. He was a magistrate, and, as such,
administered gratuitously to those who dwelt around him a
rude patriarchal justice, which, in spite of innumerable blunders
and of occasional acts of tyranny, was yet better than no
justice at all. He was an officer of the trainbands ; and his
military dignity, though it might move the mirth of gallants
who had served a campaign in Flanders, raised his character
in his own eyes and in the eyes of his neighbours. Nor
indeed was his soldiership justly a subject of derision. In
every county there were elderly gentlemen who had seen
service which was no child's play. One had been knighted by
Charles the First, after the battle of Edgehill. Another still
242 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
wore a patch over the scar which he had received at Naseby.
A third had defended his old house till Fairfax had blown in
the door with a petard. The presence of these old Cavaliers,
with their old swords and holsters, and with their old stories
about Goring and Lunsford, gave to the musters of militia an
earnest and warlike aspect which would otherwise have been
wanting. Even those country gentlemen who were too young
to have themselves exchanged blows with the cuirassiers of the
Parliament had, from childhood, been surrounded by the
traces of recent war, and fed with stories of the martial
exploits of their fathers and uncles. Thus the character of the
English esquire of the seventeenth century was compounded
of two elements which we are not accustomed to find united.
His ignorance and uncouthness, his low tastes and gross
phrases, would, in our time, be considered as indicating a
nature and a breeding thoroughly plebeian. Yet he was
essentially a patrician, and had, in large measure, both the
virtues and the vices which flourish among men set from their
birth in high place, and accustomed to authority, to observance,
and to self-respect. It is not easy for a generation which is
accustomed to find chivalrous sentiments only in company
with liberal studies and polished manners to image to itself a
man with the deportment, the vocabulary, and the accent of a
carter, yet punctilious on matters of genealogy and precedence,
and ready to risk his life rather than see a stain cast on the
honour of his house. It is however only by thus joining
together things seldom or never found together in our own
experience, that we can form a just idea of that rustic aristo-
cracy which constituted the main strength of the armies of
Charles the First, and which long supported, with strange
fidelity, the interest of his descendants.
The gross, uneducated, untravelled country gentleman was
commonly a Tory : but, though devotedly attached to
hereditary monarchy, he had no partiality for courtiers and
ministers. He thought, not without reason, that Whitehall
was filled with the most corrupt of mankind : that of the great
sums which the House of Commons had voted to the crown
since the Restoration part had been embezzled by cunning
politicians, and part squandered on buffoons and foreign-
courtesans. His stout English heart swelled with indignation
at the thought that the government of his country should be
subject to French dictation. Being himself generally an old
Cavalier, or the son of an old Cavalier, he reflected with bitter
resentment on the ingratitude with which the Stuarts had
ENGLAND IN 1685 243
requited their best friends. Those who heard him grumble at
the neglect with which he was treated, and at the profusion
with which wealth was lavished on the bastards of Nell Gwynn
and Madam Carwell, would have supposed him ripe for
rebellion. But all this ill humour lasted only till the throne
was really in danger. It was precisely when those whom the
sovereign had loaded with wealth and honours shrank from his
side that the country gentlemen, so surly and mutinous in the
season of his prosperity, rallied round him in a body. Thus,
after murmuring twenty years at the misgovernment of Charles
the Second, they came to his rescue in his extremity, when his
own Secretaries of State and Lords of the Treasury had
deserted him, and enabled him to gain a complete victory over
the opposition ; nor can there be any doubt that they would
have shown equal loyalty to his brother James, if James would,
even at the last moment, have refrained from outraging their
strongest feeling. For there was one institution, and one only,
which they prized even more than hereditary monarchy ; and
that institution was the Church of England. Their love of the
Church was not, indeed, the effect of study or meditation. Few
among them could have given any reason, drawn from Scripture
or ecclesiastical history, for adhering to her doctrines, her ritual,
and her polity ; nor were they, as a class, by any means strict
observers of that code of morality which is common to all
Christian sects. But the experience of many ages proves
that men may be ready to fight to the death, and to persecute
without pity, for a religion whose creed they do not understand,
and whose precepts they habitually disobey.*
The rural clergy were even more vehement in Toryism than
the rural gentry, and were a class scarcely less important. It
is to be observed, however, that the individual clergyman, as
compared with the individual gentleman, then ranked much
lower than in our days. The main support of the Church was
derived from the tithe ; and the tithe bore to the rent a much
smaller ratio than at present. King estimated the whole income
of the parochial and collegiate clergy at only four hundred and
eighty thousand pounds a year ; Davenant at only five hundred
and forty-four thousand a year. It is certainly now more than
seven times as great as the larger of these two sums. The
average rent of the land has not, according to any estimate,
* My notion of the country gentleman of the seventeenth centurj' has been
derived from sources too numerous to be recapitulated. I must leave my
description to the judgment of those who have studied the history and the
lighter literature of that age.
244 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
increased proportionally. It follows that rectors and vicars
must have been, as compared with the neighbouring knights
and squires, much poorer in the seventeenth than in the
nineteenth century.
The place of the clergyman in society had been completely
changed by the Reformation. Before that event, ecclesiastics
had formed the majority of the House of Lords, had, in wealth
and splendour, equalled, and sometimes outshone, the greatest
of the temporal barons, and had generally held the highest
civil offices. The Lord Treasurer was often a Bishop. The
Lord Chancellor was almost always so. The Lord Keeper of
the Privy Seal and the Master of the Rolls were ordinarily
churchmen. Churchmen transacted the most important
diplomatic business. Indeed, almost all that large portion
of the administration which rude and warlike nobles were
incompetent to conduct was considered as especially belonging
to divines. Men, therefore, who were averse to the life of
camps, and who were, at the same time, desirous to rise in the
state, ordinarily received the tonsure. Among them were sons
of all the most illustrious families, and near kinsmen of the
throne, Scroops and Nevilles, Bourchiers, Staffords, and Poles.
To the religious houses belonged the rents of immense domains,
and all that large portion of the tithe which is now in the hands
of laymen. Down to the middle of the reign of Henry the
Eighth, therefore, no line of life bore so inviting an aspect to
ambitious and covetous natures as the priesthood. Then
came a violent revolution. The abolition of the monasteries
deprived the Church at once of the greater part of her wealth,
and of her predominance in the Upper House of Parliament.
There was no longer an Abbot of Glastonbury or an Abbot of
Reading seated among the peers, and possessed of revenues
equal to those of a powerful Earl. The princely splendour of
William of Wykeham and of William of Waynfiete had disap-
peared. The scarlet hat of the Cardinal, the silver cross of
the Legate, were no more. The clergy had also lost the
ascendency which is the natural reward of superior mental
cultivation. Once the circumstance that a man could read
had raised a presumption that he was in orders. But, in an
age which produced such laymen as William Cecil and Nicholas
Bacon, Roger Ascham and Thomas Smith, Walter Mildmay
and Francis Walsingham, there was no reason for calling away
prelates from their dioceses to negotiate treaties, to superintend
the finances, or to administer justice. The spiritual character
not only ceased to be a qualification for high civil office, but
ENGLAND IN 1685 245
began to be regarded as a disqualification. Those worldly
motives, therefore, which had formerly induced so many able,
aspiring, and high born youths to assume the ecclesiastical
habit, ceased to operate. Not one parish in two hundred then
afforded what a man of family considered as a maintenance.
There were still indeed prizes in the Church : but they were
few ; and even the highest were mean, when compared with
the glory which had once surrounded the princes of the
hierarchy. The state kept by Parker and Grindal seemed
beggarly to those who remembered the imperial pomp of
Wolsey, his palaces, which had become the favourite abodes of
royalty, Whitehall and Hampton Court, the three sumptuous
tables daily spread in his refectory, the forty-four gorgeous
copes in his chapel, his running footmen in rich liveries, and
his body guards with gilded poleaxes. Thus the sacerdotal
office lost its attraction for the higher classes. During the
century which followed the accession of Elizabeth, scarce a
single person of noble descent took orders. At the close of
the reign of Charles the Second, two sons of peers were
Bishops ; four or five sons of peers were priests, and held
valuable preferment : but these rare exceptions did not take
away the reproach which lay on the body. The clergy were
regarded as, on the whole, a plebeian class. And, indeed, for
one who made the figure of a gentleman, ten were mere menial
servants. A large proportion of those divines who had no
benefices, or whose benefices were too small to afford a com-
fortable revenue, lived in the houses of laymen. It had long
been evident that this practice tended to degrade the priestly
character. Laud had exerted himself to effect a change ; and
Charles the First had repeatedly issued positive orders that
none but men of high rank should presume to keep domestic
chaplains.* But these injunctions had become obsolete.
Indeed, during the domination of the Puritans, many of the
ejected ministers of the Church of England could obtain bread
and shelter only by attaching themselves to the households of
royalist gentlemen ; and the habits which had been formed in
those times of trouble continued long after the re-establishment
of monarchy and episcopacy. In the mansions of men of
liberal sentiments and cultivated understandings, the chaplain
was doubtless treated with urbanity and kindness. His con-
versation, his literary assistance, his spiritual advice, were
considered as an ample return for his food, his lodging, and
his stipend. But this was not the general feeling of the
* See Heylin's Cyprianus Anglicus.
246 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
country gentlemen. The coarse and ignorant squire, who
thought that it belonged to his dignity to have grace said every
day at his table by an ecclesiastic in full canonicals, found
means to reconcile dignity with economy. A young Levite —
such was the phrase then in use — might be had for his board,
a small garret, and ten pounds a year, and might not only
perform his own professional functions, might not only be the
most patient of butts and of listeners, might not only be
always ready in fine weather for bowls, and in rainy weather
for shovelboard, but might also save the expense of a gardener,
or of a groom. Sometimes the reverend man nailed up the
apricots, and sometimes he curried the coach horses. He
cast up the farrier's bills. He walked ten miles with a message
or a parcel. He was permitted to dine with the family ; but
he was expected to content himself with the plainest fare. He
might fill himself with the corned beef and the carrots : but, as
soon as the tarts and the cheesecakes made their appearance,
he quitted his seat, and stood aloof till he was summoned to
return thanks for the repast, from a great part of which he had
been excluded.*
Perhaps, after some years of service, he was presented to
a living sufficient to support him : but he often found it
necessary to purchase his preferment by a species of Simony,
which furnished an inexhaustible subject of pleasantry to three
or four generations of scoffers. With his cure he was expected
to take a wife. The wife had ordinarily been in the patron's
service ; and it was well if she was not suspected of standing
too high in the patron's favour. Indeed, the nature of the
matrimonial connections which the clergymen of that age were
in the habit of forming is the most certain indication of the
place which the order held in the social system. An Oxonian,
writing a few months after the death of Charles the Second,
complained bitterly, not only that the country attorney and the
country apothecary looked down with disdain on the country
clergyman, but that one of the lessons most earnestly inculcated
on every girl of honourable family was to give no encourage-
ment to a lover in orders, and that, if any young lady forgot
this precept, she was almost as much disgraced as by an illicit
amour. t Clarendon, who assuredly bore no ill will to the
* Eachard, Causes of the Contempt of the Clergy ; Oldham, Satire
addressed to a Friend about to leave the University ; Tatler, 255. 258.
That the English clergy were a lowborn class, is remarked in the Travels
of the Grand Duke Cosmo. Appendix A.
t '* A causidico, medicastro, ipsaque artificum farragine, ecclesise rector
ENGLAND IN 1685 247
Church, mentions it as a sign of the confusion of ranks which
the great rebelHon had produced, that some damsels of noble
families had bestowed themselves on divines.* A waiting
woman was generally considered as the most suitable helpmate
for a parson. Queen Elizabeth, as head of the Church, had
given what seemed to be a formal sanction to this prejudice,
by issuing special orders that no clergyman should presume
to marry a servant girl, without the consent of the master
or mistress.! During several generations accordingly the
relation between priests and handmaidens was a theme for
endless jest ; nor would it be easy to find, in the comedy of
the seventeenth century, a single instance of a clergyman who
wins a spouse above the rank of a cook. J Even so late as the
time of George the Second, the keenest of all observers of life
and manners, himself a priest, remarked that, in a great
household, the chaplain was the resource of a lady's maid
whose character had been blown upon, and who was therefore
forced to give up hopes of catching the steward. §
In general the divine who quitted his chaplainship for a
benefice and a wife found that he had only exchanged one
class of vexations for another. Not one living in fifty enabled
the incumbent to bring up a family comfortably. As children
multiplied and grew, the household of the priest became more
and more beggarly. Holes appeared more and more plainly in
the thatch of his parsonage and in his single cassock. Often
it was only by toiling on his glebe, by feeding swine, and by
loading dungcarts, that he could obtain daily bread ; nor did
his utmost exertions always prevent the bailiffs from taking his
concordance and his inkstand in execution. It was a white
day on which he was admitted into the kitchen of a great house,
and regaled by the servants with cold meat and ale. His
children were brought up like the children of the neighbouring
peasantry. His boys followed the plough ; and his girls went
aut vicarius contemnitur et fit ludibrio. Gentis et familiae nitor sacris
ordinibus pollutus censetur : foeminisque natalitio insignibus unicum
inculcatur saepius prseceptum, ne modestise naufragium faciant, aut, (quod
idem auribus tarn delicatulis sonat, ) ne clerico se nuptas dari patiantur. "
Anglise Notitia, by T. Wood, of New College, Oxford, 16S6.
* Clarendon's Life, ii. 21.
t See the Injunctions of 1559, in Bishop Sparrow's Collection. Jeremy
Collier, in his Essay on Pride, speaks of this injunction with a bitterness
which proves that his own pride had not been effectually tamed.
X Roger and Abigail in Fletcher's Scornful Lady, Bull and the Nurse in
Vanbrugh's Relapse, Smirk and Susan in Shadwell's Lancashire Witches,
are instances.
§ Swift's Directions to Servants.
134
248 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
out to service. Study he found impossible : for the advowson
of his living would hardly have sold for a sum sufficient to
purchase a good theological library; and he might be considered
as unusually lucky if he had ten or twelve dogeared volumes
among the pots and pans on his shelves. Even a keen and
strong intellect might be expected to rust in so unfavourable a
situation.
Assuredly there was at that time no lack in the English
Church of ministers distinguished by abilities and learning.
But it is to be observed that these ministers were not scattered
among the rural population. They were brought together at a
few places where the means of acquiring knowledge were
abundant, and where the opportunities of vigorous intellectual
exercise were frequent.* At such places were to be found
divines qualified by parts, by eloquence, by wide knowledge
of literature, of science, and of life, to defend their Church
victoriously against heretics and sceptics, to command the
attention of frivolous and worldly congregations, to guide the
deliberations of senates, and to make religion respectable, even
in the most dissolute of courts. Some laboured to fathom the
abysses of metaphysical theology ; some were deeply versed in
biblical criticism ; and some threw light on the darkest parts of
ecclesiastical history. Some proved themselves consummate
masters of logic. Some cultivated rhetoric with such assiduity
and success that their discourses are still justly valued as models
of style. These eminent men were to be found, with scarce a
single exception, at the Universities, at the great Cathedrals,
or in the capital. Barrow had lately died at Cambridge ; and
Pearson had gone thence to the episcopal bench, Cudworth
and Henry More were still living there. South and Pococke,
Jane and Aldrich, were at Oxford. Prideaux was in the close
of Norwich, and Whitby in the close of Salisbury. But it was
chiefly by the London clergy, who were always spoken of as a
class apart, that the fame of their profession for learning and
eloquence was upheld. The principal pulpits of the metropolis
were occupied about this time by a crowd of distinguished
men, from among whom was selected a large proportion of
the rulers of the Church. Sherlock preached at the Temple,
Tillotson at Lincoln's Inn, Wake and Jeremy Collier at Gray's-
Inn, Burnet at the Rolls, Stillingfleet at St. Paul's Cathedral,
Patrick at St. Paul's, Covent Garden, Fowler at St. Giles's,
* This distinction between country clergy and town clergy is strongly
marked by Eachard, and cannot but be observed by every person who has
studied the ecclesiastical history of that age.
ENGLAND IN 1685 249
Cripplegate, Sharp ac St. Giles's in the Fields, Tenison at St.
Martin's, Sprat at St. Margaret's, Beveridge at St. Peter's in
Cornhill. Of these twelve men, all of high note in eccle-
siastical history, ten became Bishops, and four Archbishops.
Meanwhile almost the only important theological works which
came forth from a rural parsonage were those of George Bull,
afterwards Bishop of St. David's ; and Bull never would have
produced those works, had he not inherited an estate, by the
sale of which he was enabled to collect a library, such as
probably no other country clergyman in England possessed.*
Thus the Anglican priesthood was divided into two sections,
which, in acquirements, in manners, and in social position,
differed widely from each other. One section, trained for cities
and courts, comprised men familiar with all ancient and
modern learning ; men able to encounter Hobbes or Bossuet
at all the weapons of controversy ; men who could, in their
sermons, set forth the majesty and beauty of Christianity with
such justness of thought, and such energy of language, that the
indolent Charles roused himself to listen, and the fastidious
Buckingham forgot to sneer; men whose address, politeness,
and knowledge of the world qualified them to manage the
consciences of the wealthy and noble ; men with whom Halifax
loved to discuss the interests of empires, and from whom
Dryden was not ashamed to own that he had learned to write, t
The other section was destined to ruder and humbler service.
It was dispersed over the country, and consisted chiefly of per-
sons not at all wealthier, and not much more refined, than
small farmers or upper servants. Yet it was in these rustic
priests, who derived but a scanty subsistence from their tithe
sheaves and tithe pigs, and who had not the smallest chance of
ever attaining high professional honours, that the professional
spirit was strongest. Among those divines who were the boast
of the Universities and the delight of the capital, and who had
attained, or might reasonably expect to attain, opulence and
lordly rank, a party, respectable in numbers, and more
respectable in character, leaned towards constitutional principles
of government, lived on friendly terms with Presbyterians,
Independents, and Baptists, would gladly have seen a full
* Nelson's Life of Bull. As to the extreme difficulty which the country
clergy found in procuring books, see the Life of Thomas Bray, the founder
of the Society for the Propagation of the Gospel.
t "I have frequently heard him (Dryden) own with pleasure, that if he
had any talent for English prose it was owing to his having often read the
writings of the great Archbishop Tillotson." Congreve's Dedication of
Dryden's Plays.
2^0 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
toleration granted to all Protestant sects, and would even have
consented to make alterations in the Liturgy, for the purpose of
conciliating honest and candid Nonconformists. But such
latitudinarianism was held in horror by the country parson.
He was, indeed, prouder of his ragged gown than his superiors
of their lawn and of their scarlet hoods. The very conscious-
ness that there was little in his worldly circumstances to
distinguish him from the villagers to whom he preached led
him to hold immoderately high the dignity of that sacerdotal
ofifice which was his single title to reverence. Having lived in
seclusion, and having had little opportunity of correcting his
opinions by reading or conversation, he held and taught the
doctrines of indefeasible hereditary right, of passive obedience,
and of nonresistance in all their crude absurdity. Having
been long engaged in a petty war against the neighbouring
dissenters, he too often hated them for the wrongs which he had
done them, and found no fault with the Five Mile Act and the
Conventicle Act, except that those odious laws had not
a sharper edge. Whatever influence his ofifice gave him was
exerted with passionate zeal on the Tory side; and that
influence was immense. It would be a great error to imagine,
because the country rector was in general not regarded as a
gentleman, because he could not dare to aspire to the hand of
one of the young ladies at the manor house, because he was
not asked into the parlours of the great, but was left to drink
and smoke with grooms and butlers, that the power of the
clerical body was smaller than at present. The influence of
a class is by no means proportioned to the consideration
which the members of that class enjoy in their individual
capacity. A Cardinal is a much more exalted personage than
a begging friar : but it would be a grievous mistake to suppose
that the College of Cardinals has exercised a greater dominion
over the public mind of Europe than the Order of Saint
Francis. In Ireland, at present, a peer holds a far higher
station in society than a Roman Catholic priest : yet there are
in Munster and Connaught few counties where a combination
of priests would not carry an election against a combination of
peers. In the seventeenth century the pulpit was to a large
portion of the population what the periodical press now is.
Scarce any of the clowns who came to the parish church ever
saw a Gazette or a political pamphlet. Ill informed as their
spiritual pastor might be, he was yet better informed than
themselves : he had every week an opportunity of haranguing
them ; and his harangues were never answered. At every
ENGLAND IN 1685 2^1
important conjuncture, invectives against the Whigs and
exhortations to obey the Lord's anointed resounded at once
from many thousands of pulpits ; and the effect was formidable
indeed. Of all the causes which, after the dissolution of the
Oxford Parliament, produced the violent reaction against the
Exclusionists, the most potent seems to have been the oratory
of the country clergy.
The power which the country gentlemen and the country
clergymen exercised in the rural districts was in some measure
counterbalanced by the power of the yeomanry, an eminently
manly and truehearted race. The petty proprietors who culti-
vated their own fields with their own hands, and enjoyed a
modest competence, without affecting to have scutcheons and
crests, or aspiring to sit on the bench of justice, then formed a
much more important part of the nation than at present. If we
may trust the best statistical writers of that age, not less than a
hundred and sixty thousand proprietors, who with their families
must have made up more than a seventh of the whole popula-
tion, derived their subsistence from little freehold estates. The
average income of these small landholders, an income made up
of rent, profit, and wages, was estimated at between sixty and
seventy pounds a year. It was computed that the number of
persons who tilled their own land was greater than the number
of those who farmed the land of others.* A large portion of
the yeomanry had, from the time of the Reformation, leaned
towards Puritanism, had, in the civil war, taken the side of the
Parhament, had, after the Restoration, persisted in hearing
Presbyterian and Independent preachers, had, at elections,
strenuously supported the Exclusionists, and had ^ntinued,
even after the discoverv of the Rye House plot and the pro-
scription of the Whig leaders, to regard Popery and arbitrary
power with unmitigated hostility.
Great as has been the change in the rural life of England
since the Revolution, the change which has come to pass in the
cities is still more amazing. At present a sixth part of the
nation is crowded into provincial towns of more than thirty
thousand inhabitants. In the reign of Charles the Second no
provincial town in the kingdom contained thirty thousand
inhabitants ; and only four provincial towns contained so many
as ten thousand inhabitants.
Next to the capital, but next at an immense distance, stood
Bristol, then the first English seaport, and Norwich, then the
* I have taken Davenant's estimate, which is a little lower than
King's.
2^2 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
first English manufacturing town. Both have since that time
been far outstripped by younger rivals ; yet both have
made great positive advances. The population of Bristol has
quadrupled. The population of Norwich has more than
doubled.
Pepys, who visited Bristol eight years after the Restoration,
was struck by the splendour of the city. But his standard was
not high ; for he noted down as a wonder the circumstance
that, in Bristol, a man might look round him and see nothing
but houses. It seems that, in no other place with which he
was acquainted, except London, did the buildings completely
shut out the woods and fields. Large as Bristol might then
appear, it occupied but a very small portion of the area on
which it now stands. A few churches of eminent beauty rose
out of a labyrinth of narrow lanes built upon vaults of no great
solidity. If a coach or a cart entered those alleys, there was
danger that it would be wedged between the houses, and
danger also that it would break in the cellars. Goods were
therefore conveyed about the town almost exclusively in trucks
drawn by dogs ; and the richest inhabitants exhibited their
wealth, not by riding in gilded carriages, but by walking the
streets with trains of servants in rich liveries, and by keeping
tables loaded with good cheer. The pomp of the christenings
and burials far exceeded what was seen at any other place in
England. The hospitality of the city was widely renowned,
and especially the collations with which the sugar refiners
regaled their visitors. The repast was dressed in the furnace,
and was accompanied by a rich brewage made of the best
Spanish wine, and celebrated over the whole kingdom as Bristol
milk. This luxury was supported by a thriving trade with the
North American plantations and with the West Indies. The
passion for colonial traffic was so strong that there was scarce
a small shopkeeper in Bristol who had not a venture on board
of some ship bound for Virginia or the Antilles. Some of
these ventures indeed were not of the most honourable kind.
There was, in the Transatlantic possessions of the crown a
great demand for labour ; and this demand was partly supplied
by a system of crimping and kidnapping at the principal
English seaports. Nowhere was this system found in such
active and extensive operation as at Bristol. Even the first
magistrates of that city were not ashamed to enrich themselves
by so odious a commerce. The number of houses appears,
from the returns of the hearth money, to have been, in the
year 1685, just five thousand three hundred. We can hardly
ENGLAND IN 1685 253
suppose the number of persons in a house to have been greater
than in the City of London ; and in the City of London we
learn from the best authority that there were then fifty-five
persons to ten houses. The population of Bristol must there-
fore have been about twenty-nine thousand souls.*
Norwich was the capital of a large and fruitful province. It
was the residence of a Bishop and of a chapter. It was the
chief seat of the chief manufacture of the realm. Some
men distinguished by learning and science had recently dwelt
there ; and no place in the kingdom, except the capital and the
Universities, had more attractions for the curious. The library,
the museum, the aviary, and the botanical garden of Sir Thomas
Browne, were thought by Fellows of the Royal Society well
worthy of a long pilgrimage. Norwich had also a court in
miniature. In the heart of the city stood an old palace of the
Dukes of Norfolk, said to be the largest town house in the
kingdom out of London. In this mansion, to which were
annexed a tennis court, a bowling green, and a wilderness,
stretching along the banks of the Wansum, the noble family of
Howard frequently resided, and kept a state resembling that of
petty sovereigns. Drink was served to guests in goblets of pure
gold. The very tongs and shovels were of silver. Pictures by
Italian masters adorned the walls. The cabinets were filled
with a fine collection of gems purchased by that Earl of
Arundel whose marbles are now among the ornaments of
Oxford. Here, in the year 167 1, Charles and his court were
sumptuously entertained. Here, too, all comers were annually
welcomed, from Christmas to Tw^elfth Night. Ale flowed in
oceans for the populace. Three coaches, one of which had
been built at a cost of five hundred pounds to contain fourteen
persons, were sent every afternoon round the city to bring
ladies to the festivities ; and the dances were always followed
by a luxurious banquet. When the Duke of Norfolk came
to Norwich, he was greeted like a King returning to his
capital. The bells of the Cathedral and of Saint Peter Man-
* Evelyn's Diary, June 27. 1654 ; Pepys's Diary, June 13. 1668 ; Roger
North's Lives of Lord Keeper Guildford, and of Sir Dudley North ; Petty's
Political Arithmetic. I have taken Petty's facts, but, in drawing infer-
ences from them, I have been guided by King and Davenant, who, though
not abler men than he, had the advantage of coming after him. As to tlie
kidnapping for which Bristol was infamous, see North's Life of Guildford,
121. 216., and the harangue of Jeffreys on the subject, in the Impartial
History of his Life and Death, printed with the Bloody Assizes. His
style was, as usual, coarse ; but I cannot reckon the reprimand which he
gave to the magistrates of Bristol among his crimes.
2 54 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
croft were rung : the guns of the Castle were fired ; and
the Mayor and Aldermen waited on their illustrious fellow
citizen with complimentary addresses. In the year 1693
the population of Norwich was found, by actual enumera-
tion, to be between twenty-eight and twenty-nine thousand
souls.*
Far below Norwich, but still high in dignity and importance,
were some other ancient capitals of shires. In that age it was
seldom that a country gentleman went up with his family to
London. The county town was his metropolis. He some-
times made it his residence during part of the year. At all
events, he was often attracted thither by business and pleasure,
by assizes, quarter sessions, elections, musters of militia,
festivals, and races. There were the halls where the judges,
robed in scarlet and escorted by javelins and trumpets, opened
the King's commission twice a year. There were the markets
at which the corn, the cattle, the wool, and the hops of the
surrounding country were exposed to sale. There were the
great fairs to which merchants came down from London, and
where the rural dealer laid in his annual stores of sugar,
stationery, cutlery, and muslin. There were the shops at
which the best families of the neighbourhood bought grocery
and millinery. Some of these places derived dignity from
interesting historical recollections, from cathedrals decorated
by all the art and magnificence of the middle ages, from
palaces where a long succession of prelates had dwelt, from
closes surrounded by the venerable abodes of deans and canons,
and from castles which had in the old time repelled the
Nevilles or De Veres, and which bore more recent traces of
the vengeance of Rupert or of Cromwell.
Conspicuous amongst these interesting cities were York,
the capital of the north, and Exeter, the capital of the west.
Neither can have contained much more than ten thousand
inhabitants. Worcester, the queen of the cider land, had about
eight thousand ; Nottingham probably as many. Gloucester,
renowned for that resolute defence which had been fatal to
Charles the First, had certainly between four and five thousand ;
Derby not quite four thousand. Shrewsbury was the chief
place of an extensive and fertile district. The court of the
marches of Wales was held there. In the language of the
* Fuller's Worthies ; Evelyn's Diary, Oct. 17. 1671 ; Journal of
E. Browne, son of Sir Thomas Browne, Jan. i66f ; Blomefield's
History of Norfolk ; History of the City and County of Norwich, 2 vols.
176S.
ENGLAND IN 1685 255
gentry many miles round the Wrekin, to go to Shrewsbury was
to go to town. The provincial wits and beauties imitated, as
well as they could, the fashions of Saint James's Park, in the
walks along the side of the Severn. The inhabitants were
about seven thousand.*
The population of every one of these places has, since the
Revolution, much more than doubled. The population of
some has multiplied sevenfold. The streets have been almost
entirely rebuilt. Slate has succeeded to thatch, and brick to
timber. The pavements and the lamps, the display of wealth
in the principal shops, and the luxurious neatness of the
dweUings occupied by the gentry would, in the seventeenth
century, have seemed miraculous. Yet is the relative im-
portance of the old capitals of counties by no means what it
was. Younger towns, towns which are rarely or never
mentioned in our early history and which sent no representa-
tives to our early Parliaments, have, within the memory of
persons still living, grown to a greatness which this generation
contemplates with wonder and pride, not unaccompanied by
awe and anxiety.
The most eminent of these towns were indeed known in
the seventeenth century as respectable seats of industry. Nay,
their rapid progress and their vast opulence were then some-
times described in language which seems ludicrous to a man
who has seen their present grandeur. One of the most
populous and prosperous among them was Manchester. It
had been required by the Protector to send one representative
to his Parliament, and was mentioned by writers of the time
of Charles the Second as a busy and opulent place. Cotton
had, during half a century, been brought thither from Cyprus
and Smyrna ; but the manufacture was in its infancy. Whitney
* The population of York appears, from the return of baptisms and
burials, in Drake's History, to have been about 13,000 in 1730. Exeter
had only 17,000 inhabitants in 1801. The population of Worcester was
numbered just before the siege in 1646. See Nash's History of Worcester-
shire. I have made allowance for the increase which must be supposed to
have taken place in forty years. In 1740, the population of Nottingham
was found, by enumeration, to be just 10,000. See Dering's History. The
population of Gloucester may readily be inferred from the number of houses
which King found in the returns of hearth money, and from the number of
births and burials which is given in Atkyns's History. The population of
Derby was 4000 in 1712. See Wolley's MS. History, quoted in Lyson's
Magna Britannia. The population of Shrewsbury was ascertained, in 1695,
by actual enumeration. As to the gaieties of Shrewsbury, see Farquhar's
Recruiting Officer. Farquhar's description is borne out by a ballad ia the
Pepysian Library, of which the burden is " Shrewsbury for me."
*I34
2^b HISTORY OF ENGLAND
had not yet taught how the raw material might be furnished
in quantities almost fabulous. Arkwright had yet not taught
how it might be worked up with a speed and precision which
seem magical. The whole annual import did not, at the end
of the seventeenth century, amount to two millions of pounds,
a quantity which would now hardly supply the demand of
forty-eight hours. That wonderful emporium, which in
population and wealth far surpasses capitals so much renowned
as Berlin, Madrid, and Lisbon, was then a mean and ill built
market town, containing under six thousand people. It then
had not a single press. It now supports a hundred printing
establishments. It then had not a single coach. It now
supports twenty coachmakers.*
Leeds was already the chief seat of the woollen manufactures
of Yorkshire : but the elderly inhabitants could still remember
the time when the first brick house, then and long after called
the Red House, was built. They boasted loudly of their
increasing wealth, and of the immense sales of cloth which
took place in the open air on the bridge. Hundreds, nay
thousands of pounds, had been paid down in the course of
one busy market day. The rising importance of Leeds had
attracted the notice of successive governments. Charles the
First had granted municipal privileges to the town. Oliver
had invited it to send one member to the House of Commons.
But from the returns of the hearth money it seems certain
that the whole population of the borough, an extensive district
which contains many hamlets, did not, in the reign of Charles
the Second, exceed seven thousand souls. In 1841 there
were more than a hundred and fifty thousand.!
About a day's journey south of Leeds, on the verge of a
wild moorland tract, lay an ancient manor, now rich with
cultivation, then barren and uninclosed, which was known by
the name of Hallamshire. Iron abounded there ; and, from a
very early period, the rude whittles fabricated there had been
sold all over the kingdom. They had indeed been mentioned
by Geoffrey Chaucer in one of his Canterbury Tales. But the
manufacture appears to have made little progress during the
• Blome's Britannia, 1673 ; Aikin's Country round Manchester ; Man-
chester Directory, 1845 ; Baines, History of the Cotton Manufacture.
The best information which I have been able to find, touching the popu-
lation of Manchester in the seventeenth century, is contained in a paper
drawn up by the Reverend R. Parkinson, and published in the Journal of
the Statistical Society for October, 1842.
t Thoresby's Ducatus Leodensis ; Whitaker's Loidis and Elmete ; War-
dell's Municipal History of the Borough of Leeds.
ENGLAND IN 1685 257
three centuries which followed his time. This languor may
perhaps be explained by the fact that the trade was, during
almost the whole of this long period, subject to such regulations
as the lord and his court leet thought fit to impose. The more
delicate kinds of cutlery were either made in the capital, or
brought from the Continent. It was not indeed till the
reign of George the First that the English surgeons ceased
CO import from France those exquisitely fine blades which are
required for operations on the human frame. Most of the
Hallamshire forges were collected in a market town which
had sprung up near the castle of the proprietor, and which, in
the reign of James the First, had been a singularly miserable
place, containing about two thousand inhabitants, of whom a
third were half starved and half naked beggars. It seems
certain from the parochial registers that the population did not
amount to four thousand at the end of the reign of Charles the
Second. The effects of a species of toil singularly unfavour-
able to the health and vigour of the human frame were at once
discerned by every traveller. A large proportion of the people
had distorted limbs. This is that Sheffield which now, with
its dependencies, contains a hundred and twenty thousand
souls, and which sends forth its admirable knives, razors, and
lancets to the farthest ends of the world.*
Birmingham had not been thought of sufificient importance
to send a member to Oliver's Parliament. Yet the manu-
facturers of Birmingham were already a busy and thriving race.
They boasted that their hardware was highly esteemed, not
indeed as now, at Pekin and Lima, at Bokhara and Timbuctoo,
but in London, and even as far off as Ireland. They had
acquired a less honourable renown as coiners of bad money.
In allusion to their spurious groats, the Tory party had fixed
on demagogues, who hypocritically affected zeal against Popery,
the nickname of Birminghams. Yet in 1685 the population,
which is now little less than two hundred thousand, did not
amount to four thousand. Birmingham buttons were just
beginning to be known : of Birmingham guns nobody had yet
heard ; and the place whence, two generations later, the
magnificent editions of Baskerville went forth to astonish all
the librarians of Europe, did not contain a single regular shop
where a Bible or an almanack could be bought. On market
days a bookseller named Michael Johnson, the father of the
great Samuel Johnson, came over from Lichfield, and opened
• Hunter's History of Hallamshire.
258 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
a Stall durino; a few hours. This supply of literature was long
found adequate to the demand.*
These four chief seats of our great manufactures deserve
especial mention. It would be tedious to enumerate all the
populous and opulent hives of industry which, a hundred
and fifty years ago, were hamlets without a parish church,
or desolate moors, inhabited only by grouse and wild deer.
Nor has the change been less signal in those outlets by
which the products of English looms and forges are poured
forth over the whole world. At present Liverpool contains
about three hundred thousand inhabitants. The shipping
registered at her port amounts to between four and five
hundred thousand tons. Into her custom house has been
repeatedly paid in one year a sum more than thrice as great as
the whole income of the English crown in 1685. The receipts
of her post office, even since the great reduction of the duty,
exceed the sum which the postage of the whole kingdom
yielded to the Duke of York. Her endless docks, quays and
warehouses are among the wonders of the world. Yet even
those docks and quays and warehouses seem hardly to suffice
for the gigantic trade of the Mersey ; and already a rival city
is growing fast on the opposite shore. In the days of Charles
the Second Liverpool was described as a rising town which
had recently made great advances, and which maintained a
profitable intercourse with Ireland and with the sugar colonies.
The customs had multiplied eightfold within sixteen years,
and amounted to what was then considered as the im.mense
sum of fifteen thousand pounds annually. But the population
can hardly have exceeded four thousand : the shipping was
about fourteen hundred tons, less than the tonnage of a single
modern Indiaman of the first class ; and the whole number of
seamen belonging to the port cannot be estimated at more than
two hundred.!
* Blome's Britannia, 1673 > Dugdale's Warwickshire ; North's Examen,
321.; Preface to Absalom and Achitophel ; Hutton's History of Birming-
ham ; Boswell's Life of Johnson. In 1690 the burials at Birmingham
were 150, the baptisms 125. I think it probable that the annual mortality
was little less than one in twenty-five. In London it was considerably
greater. A historian of Nottingham, half a century later, boasted of the
extraordinary salubrity of his town, where the annual mortality was one in
thirty. See Bering's History of Nottingham.
t Blome's Britannia ; Gregson's Antiquities of the County Palatine and
Duchy of Lancaster, Part II.; Petition from Liverpool in the Privy
Council Book, May 10. 1686. In 1690 the burials at Liverpool were 151,
the baptisms 1 20. In 1844 the net receipt of the customs at Liverpool was
4,365,526/. is. Sd.
ENGLAND IN I685 2^9
Such has been the progress of those towns where wealth is
created and accumulated. Not less rapid has been the
progress of towns of a very different kind, towns in which
wealth, created and accumulated elsewhere, is expended for
purposes of health and recreation. Some of the most remark-
able of these towns have sprung into existence since the time
of the Stuarts. Cheltenham is now a greater city than any
which the kingdom contained in the seventeenth century,
London alone excepted. But in the seventeenth century, and
at the beginning of the eighteenth, Cheltenham was mentioned
by local historians merely as a rural parish lying under the
Cotswold Hills, and affording good ground, both for tillage
and pasture. Corn grew and cattle browsed over the space
now covered by that gay succession of streets and villas.*
Brighton was described as a place which had once been
thriving, which had possessed many small fishing barks, and
which had, when at the height of prosperity, contained above
two thousand inhabitants, but which was sinking fast into decay.
The sea was gradually gaining on the buildings, which at
length almost entirely disappeared. Ninety years ago the ruins
of an old fort were to be seen lying among the pebbles and
seaweed on the beach ; and ancient men could still point out
the traces of foundations on a spot where a street of more than
a hundred huts had been swallowed up by the waves. So
desolate was the place after this calamity, that the vicarage was
thought scarcely worth having. A few poor fishermen, how-
ever, still continued to dry their nets on those cUffs, on which
now a town, more than twice as large and populous as the
Bristol of the Stuarts, presents, mile after mile, its gay and
fantastic front to the sea.f
England, however, was not, in the seventeenth century,
destitute of watering places. The gentry of Derbyshire and
of the neighbouring counties repaired to Buxton, where they
were crowded into low wooden sheds, and regaled with oat-
cake, and with a viand which the hosts called mutton, but
which the guests strongly suspected to be dog.| Tunbridge
Wells, lying within a day's journey of the capital, and in one of
the richest and most highly civilised parts of the kingdom, had
much greater attractions. At present we see there a town
which would, a hundred and sixty years ago, have ranked, in
* Atkyns's Gloucestershire.
t Magna Britannia ; Grose's Antiquities ; New Brighthelmstone Di-
rectory, 1770.
X Tour in Derbyshire, by Thomas Browne, son of Sir Thomas.
26o HISTORY OF ENGLAND
population, fourth or fifth among the towns of England. The
brilliancy of the shops and the luxury of the private dwellings
far surpasses anything that England could then show. When
the court, soon after the Restoration, visited Tunbridge Wells,
there was no town : but, within a mile of the spring, rustic
cottages, somewhat cleaner and neater than the ordinary
cottages of that time, were scattered over the heath. Some of
these cabins were moveable, and were carried on sledges from
one part of the common to another. To these huts men of
fashion, wearied with the din and smoke of London, sometimes
came in the summer to breathe fresh air, and to catch a
glimpse of rural life. During the season a kind of fair was
daily held near the fountain. The wives and daughters of the
Kentish farmers came from the neighbouring villages with
cream, cherries, wheatears, and quails. To chaffer with them,
to flirt with them, to praise their straw hats and tight heels, was
a refreshing pastime to voluptuaries sick of the airs of actresses
and maids of honour. Milliners, toymen, and jewellers came
down from London, and opened a bazaar under the trees. In
one booth the politician might find his coffee and the London
Gazette ; in another were gamblers playing deep at basset ;
and, on fine evenings, the fiddles were in attendance, and there
were morris dances on the elastic turf of the bowling green.
In 1685 a subscription had just been raised among those who
frequented the wells for building a church, which the Tories,
who then domineered everywhere, insisted on dedicating to
Saint Charles the Martyr.
But at the head of the English watering places, without a
rival, was Bath. The springs of that city had been renowned
from the days of the Romans. It had been, during many
centuries, the seat of a Bishop. The sick repaired thither from
every part of the realm. The King sometimes held his court
there. Nevertheless, Bath was then a maze of only four or five
hundred houses, crowded within an old wall in the vicinity of
the Avon. Pictures of what were considered as the finest of
those houses are still extant, and greatly resemble the lowest
rag shops and pothouses of Ratcliffe Highway. Even then,
indeed, travellers complained of the narrowness and meanness
of the streets. That beautiful city which charms even eyes
familiar with the masterpieces of Bramante and Palladio, and
which the genius of Anstey and of Smollett, of Frances Burney
and of Jane Austen, has made classic ground, had not begun
to exist. Milsom Street itself was an open field lying far
beyond the walls ; and hedgerows intersected the space which
ENGLAND IN 1 685 26 1
is now covered by the Crescent and the Circus. The poor
patients to whom the waters had been recommended lay on
straw in a place which, to use the language of a contemporary
physician, was a covert rather than a lodging. As to the com-
forts and luxuries which were to be found in the interior of the
houses of Bath by the fashionable visitors who resorted thither
in search of health or amusement, we possess information more
complete and minute than can generally be obtained on such
subjects. A writer who published an account of that city about
sixty years after the Revolution has accurately described the
changes which had taken place within his own recollection.
He assures us that in his younger days the gentlemen who
visited the springs slept in rooms hardly as good as the garrets
which he lived to see occupied by footmen. The floors of the
dining rooms were uncarpeted, and were coloured brown with
a wash made of soot and small beer, in order to hide the dirt.
Not a wainscot was painted. Not a hearth or a chimneypiece
was of marble. A slab of common freestone and fire irons
which had cost from three to four shillings were thought
sufficient for any fireplace. The best apartments were hung
with coarse woollen stuff, and were furnished with rushbottomed
chairs. Readers who take an interest in the progress of civilis-
ation and of the useful arts will be grateful to the humble
topographer who has recorded these facts, and will perhaps
wish that historians of far higher pretensions had sometimes
spared a few pages from military evolutions and political
intrigues, for the purpose of letting us know how the parlours
and bedchambers of our ancestors looked.!
The position of London, relatively to the other towns of the
empire, was, in the time of Charles the Second, far higher than
at present. For at present the population of London is little
more than six times the population of Manchester or of
Liverpool. In the days of Charles the Second the population
of London was more than seventeen times the population of
Bristol or of Norwich. It may be doubted whether any other
instance can be mentioned of a great kingdom in which the
* Memoires de Grammont ; Hasted's History of Kent ; Tunbridge Wells,
a Comedy, 1678 ; Causton's Tunbridgialia, 16S8 ; Metellus, a poem on
Tunbridge Wells, 1693.
t See Wood's History of Bath, 1749 ; Evelyn's Diary, June 27. 1654 ;
Pepys's Diary, June 12. 1668 ; Stukeley's Itineraium Curiosum ; Collmson's
Somersetshire ; Dr. Peirce's History and Memoirs of the Bath, 1713, book
I. chap. viii. obs. 2. 1684. I have consulted several old maps and pictures
of Bath, particularly one curious map which is surrounded by views of the
principal buildings. It bears the date of 1717.
2 62 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
first city was more than seventeen times as large as the second.
There is reason to believe that, in 1685, London had been,
during about half a century, the most populous capital in
Europe. The inhabitants, who are now at least nineteen
hundred thousand, were then probably little more than half a
million.* London had in the world only one commercial
rival, now long outstripped, the mighty and opulent Amsterdam.
EngUsh writers boasted of the forest of masts and yardarms
which covered the river from the Bridge to the Tower, and
of the stupendous sums which were collected at the Custom
House in Thames Street. There is, indeed, no doubt that
the trade of the metropolis then bore a far greater proportion
than at present to the whole trade of the country ; yet to our
generation the honest vaunting of our ancestors must appear
almost ludicrous. The shipping which they thought incredibly
great appears not to have exceeded seventy thousand tons.
This was, indeed, then more than a third of the whole tonnage
of the kingdom, but is now less than a fourth of the tonnage
of Newcastle, and is nearly equalled by the tonnage of the
steam vessels of the Thames. The customs of London
amounted, in 1685, to about three hundred and thirty thou-
sand pounds a year. In our time the net duty paid annually,
at the same place, exceeds ten millions.!
Whoever examines the maps of London which were pub-
lished towards the close of the reign of Charles the Second will
see that only the nucleus of the present capital then existed.
The town did not, as now, fade by imperceptible degrees into
the country. No long avenues of villas, embowered in lilacs
and laburnums, extended from the great centre of wealth and
civilisation almost to the boundaries of Middlesex and far
into the heart of Kent and Surrey. In the east, no part of
the immense line of warehouses and artificial lakes which now
spreads from the Tower to Blackwall had even been projected.
On the west, scarcely one of those stately piles of building
which are inhabited by the noble and wealthy was in existence ;
and Chelsea, which is now peopled by more than forty
thousand human beings, was a quiet country village with about
a thousand inhabitants. J On the north, cattle fed, and sports- "
* According to King, 530,000.
+ Macpherson's Histoi7 of Commerce ; Chalmers's Estimate ; Chamber-
layne's State of England, 1684. The tonnage of the steamers belonging
to the port of London was, at the end of 1847, about 60,000 tons. The
customs of the port, from 1842 to 1845, very nearly averaged 11,000,000/.
+ Lyson's Environs of London. The baptisms at Chelsea, between
1680 and 1690, were only forty-two a year.
ENGLAND IN 1685 263
men wandered with dogs and guns, over the site of the
borough of Marylebone, and over far the greater part of the
space now covered by the boroughs of Finsbury and of the
Tower Hamlets. Islington was almost a solitude ; and poets
loved to contrast its silence and repose with the din and tur-
moil of the monster London.* On the south the capital is
now connected with its suburb by several bridges, not inferior
in magnificence and solidity to the noblest works of the
Caesars. In 1685, a single line of irregular arches, overhung
by piles of mean and crazy houses, and garnished, after a
fashion worthy of the naked barbarians of Dahomy, with scores
of mouldering heads, impeded the navigation of the river.
Of the metropolis, the City, properly so called, was the
most important division. At the time of the Restoration it
had been built, for the most part, of wood and plaster ; the
few bricks that were used were ill baked ; the booths where
goods were exposed to sale projected far into the streets, and
were overhung by the upper stories. A few specimens of this
architecture may still be seen in those districts which were not
reached by the great fire. That fire had, in a few days,
covered a space of little less than a square mile with the ruins
of eighty-nine churches and of thirteen thousand houses. But
the City had risen again with a celerity which had excited
the admiration of neighbouring countries. Unfortunately, the
old lines of the streets had been to a great extent preserved ;
and those lines, originally traced in an age when even prin-
cesses performed their journeys on horseback, were often too
narrow to allow wheeled carriages to pass each other with
ease, and were therefore ill adapted for the residence of
wealthy persons in an age when a coach and six was a
fashionable luxury. The style of building was, however, far
superior to that of the City which had perished. The ordi-
nary material was brick, of much better quality than had
formerly been used. On the sites of the ancient parish
churches had arisen a multitude of new domes, towers, and
spires which bore the mark of the fertile genius of Wren. In
every place save one the traces of the great devastation had
been completely effaced. But the crowds of workmen, the
scaffolds and the masses of hewn stone were still to be seen
where the noblest of Protestant temples was slowly rising on
the ruins of the old Cathedral of St. Paul.f
* Cowley, Discourse of Solitude.
t The fullest and most trustworthy information about the state of the
buildings of London at this titne is to be derived from the maps and draw-
264 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
The whole character of the City has, since that time,
undergone a complete change. At present the bankers, the
merchants, and the chief shopkeepers repair thither on six
mornings of every week for the transaction of business : but
they reside in other quarters of the metropolis, or at suburban
country seats surrounded by shrubberies and flower gardens.
This revolution in private habits has produced a political
revolution of no small importance. The City is no longer
regarded by the wealthiest traders with that attachment which
every man naturally feels for his home. It is no longer
associated in their minds with domestic affections and endear-
ments. The fireside, the nursery, the social table, the quiet
bed are not there. Lombard Street and Threadneedle Street
are merely places where men toil and accumulate. They go
elsewhere to enjoy and to expend. On a Sunday, or in an
evening after the hours of business, some courts and alleys,
which a few hours before had been alive with hurrying feet
and anxious faces, are as silent as the glades of a forest.
The chiefs of the mercantile interest are no longer citizens.
They avoid, they almost contemn, municipal honours and
duties. Those honours and duties are abandoned to men
who, though useful and highly respectable, seldom belong to
the princely commercial houses of which the names are
reijowned throughout the world.
In the seventeenth century the City was the merchant's
residence. Those mansions of the great old burghers which
still exist have been turned into counting houses and ware-
houses : but it is evident that they were originally not inferior
in magnificence to the dwellings which were then inhabited
by the nobility. They sometimes stand in retired and gloomy
courts, and are accessible only by inconvenient passages :
but their dimensions are ample, and their aspect stately.
The entrances are decorated with richly carved pillars and
canopies. The staircases and landing places are not wanting
in grandeur. The floors are sometimes of wood, tessellated after
the fashion of France. The palace of Sir Robert Clayton, in
the Old Jewry, contained a superb banqueting room wains-
coted with cedar, and adorned with battles of gods and giants
ings in the British Museum and in the Pepysian Library. The badness of
the bricks in the old buildings of London is particularly mentioned in the
Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo. There is an account of the works. at
St. Paul's in Ward's London Spy. I am almost ashamed to quote such
nauseous balderdash ; but I have been forced to descend even lower, ii
possible, in search of materials.
ENGLAND IN 1685 265
in fresco.* Sir Dudley North expended four thousand pounds,
a sum which would then have been important to a Duke, on
the rich furniture of his reception rooms in Basinghall Street.!
In such abodes, under the last Stuarts, the heads of the great
firms lived splendidly and hospitably. To their dwelling place
they were bound by the strongest ties of interest and affection.
There they had passed their youth, had made their friend-
ships, had courted their wives, had seen their children grow
up, had laid the remains of their parents in the earth, and
expected that their own remains would be laid. That intense
patriotism which is peculiar to the members of societies con-
gregated within a narrow space was, in such circumstances,
strongly developed. London was, to the Londoner, what
Athens was to the Athenian of the age of Pericles, what
Florence was to the Florentine of the fifteenth century. The
citizen was proud of the grandeur of his city, punctilious
about her claims to respect, ambitious of her offices, and
zealous for her franchises.
At the close of the reign of Charles the Second the pride
of the Londoners was smarting from a cruel mortification.
The old charter had been taken away ; and the magistracy
had been remodelled. All the civic functionaries were Tories ;
and the Whigs, though in numbers and in wealth superior
to their opponents, found themselves excluded from every
local dignity. Nevertheless, the external splendour of the
municipal government was not diminished, nay, was rather
increased by this change. For, under the administration of
some Puritans who had lately borne rule, the ancient fame
of the city for good cheer had declined : but under the new
magistrates, who belonged to a more festive party, and at whose
boards guests of rank and fashion from beyond Temple Bar
were often seen, the Guildhall and the halls of the great com-
panies were enlivened by many sumptuous banquets. During
these repasts, odes, composed by the poet laureate of the
corporation, in praise of the King, the Duke, and the Mayor,
were sung to music. The drinking was deep, the shouting
loud. An observant Tory, who had often shared in these
revels, has remarked that the practice of huzzaing after
drinking healths dates from this joyous period. J
* Evelyn's Diary, Sept. 20. 1672.
t Roger North's Life of Sir Dudley North.
X North's Examen. This most amusing writer has preserved a specimen
of the sublime raptures in which the Pindar of the City indulged : —
" The worshipful Sir John Moor I
After age that name adore ! "
266 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
The magnificence displayed by the first civic magistrate was
almost regal. The gilded coach, indeed, which is now annually
admired by the crowd, was not yet a part of his state. On
great occasions he appeared on horseback, attended by a long
cavalcade inferior in magnificence only to that which, before
a coronation, escorted the sovereign from the Tower to
Westminster. The Lord Mayor was never seen in public
without his rich robe, his hood of black velvet, his gold chain,
his jewel, and a great attendance of harbingers and guards.*
Nor did the world find anything ludicrous in the pomp
which constantly surrounded him. For it was not more
than proportioned to the place which, as wielding the strength
and representing the dignity of the City of London, he
was entitled to occupy in the state. That City, being then
not only without equal in the country, but without second,
had, during five and forty years, exercised almost as great
an influence on the politics of England as Paris has, in our
own time, exercised on the politics of France. In intelligence
London was greatly in advance of every other part of the
kingdom. A government, supported and trusted by London,
could in a day obtain such pecuniary means as it would have
taken months to collect from the rest of the island. Nor were
the military resources of the capital to be despised. The
power which the Lord Lieutenants exercised in other parts of
the kingdom was in London intrusted to a Commission of
eminent citizens. Under the orders of this Commission were
twelve regiments of foot and two regiments of horse. An
army of drapers' apprentices and journeymen tailors, with
common councilmen for captains and aldermen for colonels,
might not indeed have been able to stand its ground against
regular troops ; but there were then very few regular troops in
the kingdom. A town, therefore, which could send forth, at
an hour's notice, twenty thousand men, abounding in natural
courage, provided with tolerable weapons, and not altogether
untinctured with martial discipline, could not but be a valuable
ally and a formidable enemy. It was not -forgotten that
Hampden and Pym had been protected from lawless tyranny
by the London trainbands ; that, in the great crisis of the
civil war, the London trainbands had marched to raise the
siege of Gloucester; or that, in the movement against the
military tyrants which followed the downfall of Richard
Cromwell, the London trainbands had borne a signal part.
* Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684 j Anglise Metropolis, 1690 j
Seymour's London, 1734.
ENGLAND IN 1685 267
In truth, it is no exaggeration to say that, but for the hostiHty
of the City, Charles the First would never have been vanquished,
and that, without the help of the City, Charles the Second
could scarcely have been restored.
These considerations may serve to explain why, in spite of
that attraction which had, during a long course of years,
gradually drawn the aristocracy westward, a few men of high
rank had continued, till a very recent period, to dwell in the
vicinity of the Exchange and of the Guildhall. Shaftesbury
and Buckingham, while engaged in bitter and unscrupulous
opposition to the government, had thought that they could
nowhere carry on their intrigues so conveniently or so securely
as under the protection of the City magistrates and the City
militia. Shaftesbury had therefore lived in Aldersgate Street,
at a house which may still easily be known by pilasters and
wreaths, the graceful work of Inigo. Buckingham had ordered
his mansion near Charing Cross, once the abode of the
Archbishops of York, to be pulled down ; and, while streets
and alleys which are still named after him were rising on that
site, chose to reside in Dowgate.*
These, however, were rare exceptions. Almost all the noble
families of England had long migrated beyond the walls. The
district where most of their town houses stood lies between the
City and the regions which are now considered as fashionable.
A few great men still retained their hereditary hotels between
the Strand and the river. The stately dwellings on the south
and west of Lincoln's Inn Fields, the Piazza of Covent Garden,
Southampton Square, which is now called Bloomsbury Square,
and King's Square in Soho Fields, which is now called Soho
Square, were among the favourite spots. Foreign princes were
carried to see Bloomsbury Square, as one of the wonders of
England.! Soho Square, which had just been built, was to our
ancestors a subject of pride with which their posterity will
hardly sympathize. Monmouth Square had been the name
while the fortunes of the Duke of Monmouth flourished ; and
on the southern side towered his mansion. The front, though
ungraceful, was lofty and richly adorned. The walls of the
principal apartments were finely sculptured with fruit, foliage,
and armorial bearings, and were hung with embroidered satin, if
* North's Examen, 116. Wood, Ath. Ox. Shaftesbury. The Duke ot
B.'s Litany.
t Travels of the Grand Duke Cosmo.
+ Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684 ; Pennant's London ; Smith's
Life ol NoUekens.
2 68 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Every trace of this magnificence has long disappeared ; and no
aristocratical mansion is to be found in that once aristocratical
quarter. A little way north from Holborn, and on the verge of
the pastures and cornfields, rose two celebrated palaces, each
with an ample garden. One of them, then called Southampton
House, and subsequently Bedford House, was removed about
fifty years ago to make room for a new city, which now covers,
with its squares, streets, and churches, a vast area, renowned in
the seventeenth century for peaches and snipes. The other,
Montague House, celebrated for its frescoes and furniture, was,
a few months after the death of Charles the Second, burned to
the ground, and was speedily succeeded by a more magnificent
Montague House, which, having been long the repository of
such various and precious treasures of art, science, and learning
as were scarce ever before assembled under a single roof, has
just given place to an edifice more magnificent still.*
Nearer to the court, on a space called Saint James's Fields,
had just been built Saint James's Square and Jermyn Street.
Saint James's Church had recently been opened for the
accommodation of the inhabitants of this new quarter.!
Golden Square, which was in the next generation inhabited by
lords and ministers of state, had not yet been begun. Indeed the
only dwellings to be seen on the north of Piccadilly were three
or four isolated and almost rural mansions, of which the most
celebrated was the costly pile erected by Clarendon, and nick-
named Dunkirk House. It had been purchased after its
founder's downfall by the Duke of Albemarle. The Clarendon
Hotel and Albemarle Street still preserve the memory of the
site.
He who then rambled to what is now the gayest and most
crowded part of Regent Street found himself in a solitude, and
was sometimes so fortunate as to have a shot at a woodcock. J
On the north the Oxford road ran between hedges. Three or
four hundred yards to the south were the garden walls of a few
great houses which were considered as quite out of town. On
the west was a meadow renowned for a spring from which, long
afterwards, Conduit Street was named. On the east was a field
not to be passed without a shudder by any Londoner of that
age. There, as in a place far from the haunts of men, had
• Evelyn's Diary, Oct. lo. 1683, Jan. 19. 168^.
t Stat. I Jac. II. c. 22. Evelyn's Diary, Dec. 7. 1684.
+ Old General Oglethorpe, who died in 1785, used to boast that he. had
shot birds here in Anne's reign. See Pennant's London, and the Gentle-
man's Magazine for July, 1785.
ENGLAND IN 1685 269
been dug, twenty years before, when the great plague was
raging, a pit into which the dead carts had nightly shot corpses
by scores. It was popularly believed that the earth was deeply
tainted with infection, and could not be disturbed without
imminent risk to human life. No foundations were laid there
till two generations had passed without any return of the
pestilence, and till the ghastly spot had long been surrounded
by buildings.*
We should greatly err if we were to suppose that any of the
streets and squares then bore the same aspect as at present.
The great majority of the houses, indeed, have, since that time,
been wholly, or in great part, rebuilt. If the most fashionable
parts of the capital could be placed before us, such as they then
were, we should be disgusted by their squalid appearance, and
poisoned by their noisome atmosphere. In Covent Garden a
filthy and noisy market was held close to the dwellings of the
great. Fruit women screamed, carters fought, cabbage stalks
and rotten apples accumulated in heaps at the thresholds of the
Countess of Berkshire and of the Bishop of Durham.!
The centre of Lincoln's Inn Fields was an open space where
the rabble congregated every evening, within a few yards of
Cardigan House and Winchester House, to hear mountebanks
harangue, to see bears dance, and to set dogs at oxen. Rubbish
was shot in every part of the area. Horses were exercised
there. The beggars were as noisy and importunate as in the
worst governed cities of the Continent. A Lincoln's Inn
mumper was a proverb. The whole fraternity knew the arms
and liveries of every charitably disposed grandee in the neigh-
bourhood, and, as soon as his lordship's coach and six appeared,
came hopping and crawling in crowds to persecute him. These
disorders lasted, in spite of many accidents, and of some legal
proceedings, till, in the reign of George the Second, Sir Joseph
Jekyll, Master of the Rolls, was knocked down and nearly
killed in the middle of the square. Then at length palisades
were set up, and a pleasant garden laid out.|
* The pest field will be seen in maps of London as late as the end ot
George the First's reign.
t See a very curious plan of Covent Garden made about 1690, and
engraved for Smith's History of Westminster. See also Hogarth's Morn-
ing, painted while some of the houses in the Piazza were still occupied by
people of fashion.
+ London Spy ; Tom Brown's Comical View of London and Westminster ;
Turner's Propositions for the employing of the Poor, 1678 ; Daily Courant
and Daily Journal of June, 7. 1733 ; Case of Michael v. AUestree, in 1676,
2 Levinz. p. 172. Michael had been run over by two horses which Alias-
tree was breaking in Lincoln's Inn Fields. The declaration set forth that
270 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Saint James's Square was a receptacle for all the offal and
cinders, for all the dead cats and dead dogs of Westminster.
At one time a cudgel player kept the ring there. At another
time an impudent squatter settled himself there, and built a
shed for rubbish under the windows of the gilded saloons in
which the first magnates of the realm, Norfolks, Ormonds,
Kents, and Pembrokes, gave banquets and balls. It was not
till these nuisances had lasted through a whole generation, and
till much had been written about them, that the inhabitants
applied to Parliament for permission to put up rails, and to
plant trees.*
When such was the state of the region inhabited by the
most luxurious portion of society, we may easily believe that
the great body of the population suffered what would now be
considered as insupportable grievances. The pavement was
detestable ; all foreigners cried shame upon it. The drainage
was so bad that in rainy weather the gutters soon became torrents.
Several facetious poets have commemorated the fury with
which these black rivulets roared down Snow Hill and Ludgate
Hill, bearing to Fleet Ditch a vast tribute of animal and vege-
table filth from the stalls of butchers and greengrocers. This
flood was profusely thrown to right and left by coaches and
carts. To keep as far from the carriage road as possible was
therefore the wish of every pedestrian. The mild and timid
gave the wall. The bold and athletic took it. If two roisterers
met, they cocked their hats in each other's faces, and pushed
each other about till the weaker was shoved towards the kennel.
If he was a mere bully he sneaked off, muttering that he
should find a time. If he was pugnacious, the encounter
probably ended in a duel behind Montague House.!
The houses were not numbered. There would indeed have
been little advantage in numbering them ; for of the coachmen,
chairmen porters, and errand boys of London, a very small
proportion could read. It was necessary to use marks which
the defendant "porta deux chivals ungovernable en un coach, et improvide,
incaute, et absque debita consideratione ineptitudinis loci la eux drive pur
eux faire tractable et apt pur un coach, quels chivals, pur ceo que, per leur
ferocite, ne poient estre rule, curre sur le plaintiff et le noie."
* Stat. 12 Geo. I. c. 25 ; Commons' Journals, Feb. 25. March 2. I72-| ;
London Gardener, 1712 ; Evening Post, March 23. 1731. I have not been
able to find this number of the Evening Post ; I therefore quote it on the
faith of Mr. Malcolm, who mentions it in his History of London.
t Lettres sur les Anglois, written early in the reign of William the Third ;
Swift's City Shower ; Gay's Trivia. Johnson used to relate a curious' con-
versation which he had with his mother about giving and taking the wall.
ENGLAND IN 1 685 27 I
the most ignorant could understand. The shops were therefore
distinguished by painted signs, which gave a gay and grotesque
aspects to the streets. The walk from Charing Cross to
Whitechapel lay through an endless succession of Saracens'
Heads, Royal Oaks, Blue Bears, and Golden Lambs, which
disappeared when they were no longer required for the direction
of the common people.
When the evening closed in, the difificulty and danger of
walking about London became serious indeed. The garret
windows were opened, and pails were emptied, with little regard
to those who were passing below. Falls, bruises, and broken
bones were of constant occurrence. For, till the last year of
the reign of Charles the Second, most of the streets were left
in profound darkness. Thieves and robbers plied their trade
with impunity : yet they were hardly so terrible to peaceable
citizens as another class of ruffians. It was a favourite amuse-
ment of dissolute young gentlemen to swagger by night about
the town, breaking windows, upsetting sedans, beating quiet
men, and offering rude caresses to pretty women. Several
dynasties of these tyrants had, since the Restoration, domineered
over the streets. The Muns and Tityre Tus had given place
to the Hectors, and the Hectors had been recently succeeded
by the Scourers. At a later period arose the Nicker, the
Hawcubite, and the yet more dreaded name of Mohawk.* The
machinery for keeping the peace was utterly contemptible.
There was an Act of Common Council which provided that
more than a thousand watchmen should be constantly on the
alert in the city, from sunset to sunrise, and that every
inhabitant should take his turn of duty. But this Act was
negligently executed. Few of those who were summoned left
their homes ; and those few generally found it more agreeable
to tipple in alehouses than to pace the streets.!
It ought to be noticed that, in the last year of the reign of
* Oldham's Imitation of the 3d Satire of Juvenal, 1682; Shadwell's
Scourers, 1690. Many other authorities will readily occur to all who are
acquainted with the popular literature of that and the succeeding generation.
It may be suspected that some of the Tityre Tus, like good Cavaliers,
broke Milton's windows shortly after the Restoration. I am confident
that he was thinking of those pests of London when he dedicated the
noble lines, —
" And in luxurious cities, when the noise
Of riot ascends above the loftiest towers,
And injury and outraqe, and when night
Darkens the streets, then wander forth the sons
Of Belial, flown with insolence and wiue."
t Seymour's London.
272 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Charles the Second, began a great change in the police of
London, a change which has perhaps added as much to the
happiness of the body of the people as revolutions of much
greater fame. An ingenious projector, named Edward Heming,
obtained letters patent conveying to him, for a term of years,
the exclusive right of lighting up London. He undertook, for
a moderate consideration, to place a light before every tenth
door, on moonless nights, from Michaelmas to Lady Day, and
from six to twelve of the clock. Those who now see the
capital all the year round, from dusk to dawn, blazing with
a splendour compared with which the illuminations for La
Hogue and Blenheim would have looked pale, may perhaps
smile to think of Heming's lanterns, which glimmered feebly\
before one house in ten during a small part of one night in *
three. But such was not the feeling of his contemporaries.
His scheme was enthusiastically applauded, and furiously
attacked. The friends of improvement extolled him as the
greatest of all the benefactors of his city. What, they asked,
were the boasted inventions of Archimedes, when compared
with the achievement of the man who had turned the nocturnal
shades into noon day ? In spite of these eloquent eulogies the
cause of darkness was not left undefended. There were fools
in that age who opposed the introduction of what was called
the new light as strenuously as fools in our age have opposed
the introduction of vaccination and railroads, as strenuously as
the fools of an age anterior to the dawn of history doubtless
opposed the introduction of the plough and of alphabetical
writing. Many years after the date of Heming's patent there
were extensive districts in which no lamp was seen.*
We may easily imagine what, in such times, must have been
the state of the quarters of London which were peopled by the
outcasts of society. Among those quarters one had attained a
scandalous preeminence. On the confines of the City and
the Temple had been founded, in the thirteenth century, a
House of Carmelite Friars, distinguished by their white hoods.
The precinct of this house had, before the Reformation, been
a sanctuary for criminals, and still retained the privilege of
protecting debtors from arrest. Insolvents consequently were
to be found in every dwelling, from cellar to garret. Of these
a large proportion were knaves and libertines, and were followed
to their asylum by women more abandoned than themselves.
The civil power was unable to keep order in a district
* Anglise Metropolis, 1690, Sect. 17. entitled, " Of the new lights."
Seymour's London.
ENGLAND IN 1 685 273
swarming with such inhabitants ; and thus Whitefriars became
the favourite resort of all who wished to be emancipated from
the restraints of the law. Though the immunities legally
belonging to the place extended only to cases of debt, cheats,
false witnesses, forgers, and highwaymen found refuge there.
For amidst a rabble so desperate no peace officer's life was in
safety. At the cry of " Rescue " bullies with swords and
cudgels, and termagant hags with spits and broomsticks,
poured forth by hundreds ; and the intruder was fortunate if
he escaped back into Fleet Street, hustled, stripped, and
pumped upon. Even the warrant of the Chief Justice of
England could not be executed without the help of a company
of musketeers. Such relics of the barbarism of the darkest
ages were to be found within a short walk of the chambers
where Somers was studying history and law, of the chapel
where Tillotson was preaching, of the coffee house where
Dryden was passing judgment on poems and plays, and of
the hall where the Royal Society was examining the astro-
nomical system of Isaac Newton.*
Each of the two cities which made up the capital of
England had its own centre of attraction. In the metropolis
of commerce the point of convergence was the Exchange ;
in the metropolis of fashion the Palace. But the Palace did
not retain its influence so long as the Exchange. The
Revolution completely altered the relations between the court
and the higher classes of society. It was by degrees dis-
covered that the King, in his individual capacity, had very
Httle to give ; that coronets and garters, bishoprics and
embassies, lordships of the Treasury and tellerships of the
Exchequer, nay, even charges in the royal stud and bed-
chamber, were really bestowed, not by him, but by his
advisers. Every ambitious and covetous man perceived that
he would consult his own interest far better by acquiring the
dominion of a Cornish borough, and by rendering good
service to the ministry during a critical session, than by
becoming the companion, or even the minion, of his prince.
It was therefore in the antechambers, not of George the First
and of George the Second, but of Walpole and of Pelham,
that the daily crowd of courtiers was to be found. It is also to
be remarked that the same revolution which made it impossible
that our Kings should use the patronage of the state, merely
for the purpose of gratifying their personal predilections, gave
* Stowe's Survey of London ; Shadwell's Squire of Alsatia ; Ward's
London Spy ; Stat. 8 & 9 Gul. III. cap. 27.
2 74 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
US several Kings unfitted by their education and habits to be
gracious and atfable hosts. They had been born and bred on
the Continent. They never felt themselves at home in our
island. If they spoke our language, they spoke it inelegantly
and with effort. Our national character they never fully
understood. Our national manners they hardly attempted to
acquire. The most important part of their duty they per-
formed better than any ruler who had preceded them : for they
governed strictly according to law : but they could not be
the first gentlemen of the realm, the heads of polite society.
If ever they unbent, it was in a very small circle where hardly
an English face was to be seen ; and they were never so happy
as when they could escape for a summer to their native land.
They had indeed their days of reception for our nobility and
gentry; but the reception was mere matter of form, and
became at last as solemn a ceremony as a funeral.
Not such was the court of Charles the Second. Whitehall,
when he dwelt there, was the focus of political intrigue and ot
fashionable gaiety. Half the jobbing and half the flirting of
the metropolis went on under his roof. Whoever could make
himself agreeable to the prince, or could secure the good ofifices
of the mistress, might hope to rise in the world without render-
ing any service to the government, without being even known
by sight to any minister of state. This courtier got a frigate,
and that a company ; a third the pardon of a rich offender ; a
fourth, a lease of crown land on easy terms. If the King
notified his pleasure that a briefless lawyer should be made
a judge, or that a libertine baronet should be made a peer,
the gravest counsellors, after a little murmuring, submitted.*
Interest, therefore, drew a constant press of suitors to the gates
of the palace ; and those gates always stood wide. The King
kept open house every day, and all day long, for the good
society of London, the extreme Whigs only excepted. Hardly
any gentleman had any difficulty in making his way to the royal
presence. The levee was exactly what the word imports.
Some men of quality came every morning to stand round their
master, to chat with him while his wig was combed and his
cravat tied, and to accompany him in his early walk through
the Park. All persons who had been properly introduced
might, without any special invitation, go to see him dine, sup,
dance, and play at hazard, and might have the pleasure of
* See Sir Roger North's account of the way in which Wright was made
a judge, and Clarendon's account of the way in which Sir George Savile
was made a peer.
ENGLAND IN 1685 27^
hearing him tell stories, which indeed he told remarkably well,
about his flight from Worcester, and about the misery which he
had endured when he was a state prisoner in the hands of the
canting meddUng preachers of Scotland. Bystanders whom
His Majesty recognised often came in for a courteous word.
This proved a far more successful kingcraft than any that his
father or grandfather had practised. It was not easy for the
most austere republican of the school of Marvel to resist the
fascination of so much good humour and affability : and many
a veteran Cavalier, in whose heart the remembrance of
unrequited sacrifices and services had been festering during
twenty years, was compensated in one moment for wounds and
sequestrations by his sovereign's kind nod, and " God bless you,
my old friend 1 "
Whitehall naturally became the chief staple of news.
Whenever there was a rumour that anything important had
happened or was about to happen, people hastened thither to
obtain intelligence from the fountain head. The galleries
presented the appearance of a modern club room at an anxious
time. They were full of people inquiring whether the Dutch
mail was in, what tidings the express from France had brought,
whether John Sobiesky had beaten the Turks, whether the
Doge of Genoa was really at Paris. These were matters about
which it was safe to talk aloud. But there were subjects
concerning which information was asked and given in whispers.
Had Halifax got the better of Rochester? Was there to
be a Parliament? Was the Duke of York really going to
Scotland? Had Monmouth really been summoned from the
Hague ? Men tried to read the countenance of every minister
as he went through the throng to and from the royal closet.
All sorts of auguries were drawn from the tone in which His
Majesty spoke to the Lord President, or from the laugh with
which His Majesty honoured a jest of the Lord Privy Seal ;
and in a few hours the hopes and fears inspired by such slight
indications had spread to all the coffee houses from St. James's
to the Tower.*
The coffee house must not be dismissed with a cursory
mention. It might indeed at that time have been not im-
properly called a most important political institution. No
* The sources from which I have drawn my information about the state
of the court are too numerous to recapitulate. Among them are the
Despatches of Barillon, Van Citters, Ronquillo, and Adda, the Travels of
the Grand Duke Cosmo, the Diaries of Pepys, Evelyn, and Teonge, and
the Memoirs of Grammont and Reresby.
276 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Parliament had sat for years. The municipal council of the
City had ceased to speak the sense of the citizens. Public
meetings, harangues, resolutions, and the rest of the modern
machinery of agitation had not yet come into fashion.
Nothing resembling the modern newspaper existed. In such
circumstances the coffee houses were the chief organs through
which the public opinion of the metropolis vented itself.
The first of these establishments had been set up, in the
time of the Commonwealth, by a Turkey merchant, who had
acquired among the Mahometans a taste for their favourite
beverage. The convenience of being able to make appoint-
ments in any part of the town, and of being able to pass
evenings socially at a very small charge, was so great that the
fashion spread fast. Every man of the upper or middle class
went daily to his coffee house to learn the news and to discuss
it. Every coffee house had one or more orators to whose
eloquence the crowd listened with admiration, and who soon
became, what the journalists of our own time have been called,
a fourth Estate of the realm. The court had long seen with
uneasiness the growth of this new power in the state. An
attempt had been made, during Danby's administration, to
close the coffee houses. But men of all parties missed their
usual places of resort so much that there was an universal
outcry. The government did not venture, in opposition to
a feeling so strong and general, to enforce a regulation of which
the legality might well be questioned. Since that time ten
years had elapsed, and during those years the number and
influence of the coffee houses had been constantly increasing.
Foreigners remarked that the coffee house was that which
especially distinguished London from all other cities ; that the
coffee house was the Londoner's home, and that those who
wished to find a gentleman commonly asked, not whether he
lived in Fleet Street or Chancery Lane, but whether he
frequented the Grecian or the Rainbow. Nobody was
excluded from these places who laid down his penny at the
bar. Yet every rank and profession, and every shade of
religious and pohtical opinion, had its own head quarters.
There were houses near St. James's Park where fops con-
gregated, their heads and shoulders covered with black or
flaxen wigs, not less ample than those which are now worn by
the Chancellor and by the Speaker of the House of Commons.
The wig came from Paris ; and so did the rest of the fine
gentleman's ornaments, his embroidered coat, his fringed
gloves, and the tassel which upheld his pantaloons. The
ENGLAND IN 1685 277
convdi-sation was in that dialect which, long after it had ceased
to be spoken in fashionable circles, continued, in the mouth
of Lord Foppington, to excite the mirth of theatres.* The
atmosphere was like that of a perfumer's shop. Tobacco in
any other form than that of richly scented snuff was held in
abomination. If any clown, ignorant of the usages of the
house, called for a pipe, the sneers of the whole assembly and
the short answers of the waiters soon convinced him that he
had better go somewhere else. Nor, indeed, would he have
had far to go. For, in general, the coffee rooms reeked with
tobacco like a guardroom ; and strangers sometimes expressed
their surprise that so many people should leave their own
firesides to sit in the midst of eternal fog and stench.
Nowhere was the smoking more constant than at Will's. That
celebrated house, situated between Covent Garden and Bow
Street, was sacred to polite letters. There the talk was about
poetical justice and the unities of place and time. There was
a faction for Perrault and the moderns, a faction for Boileau
and the ancients. One group debated whether Paradise Lost
ought not to have been in rhyme. To another an envious
poetaster demonstrated that Venice Preserved ought to have
been hooted from the stage. Under no roof was a greater
variety of figures to be seen, Earls in stars and garters, clergy-
men in cassocks and bands, pert Templars, sheepish lads from
the Universities, translators and index makers in ragged coats
of frieze. The great press was to get near the chair where
John Dryden sate. In winter that chair was always in the
warmest nook by the fire ; in summer it stood in the balcony.
To bow to him, and to hear his opinion of Racine's last
tragedy or of Bossu's treatise on epic poetry, was thought a
privilege. A pinch from his snuff box was an honour sufficient
to turn the head of a young enthusiast. There were coffee
houses where the first medical men might be consulted.
Doctor John Radcliffe, who, in the year 1685, rose to the
largest practice in London, came daily, at the hour when the
Exchange was full, from his house in Bow Street, then a
fashionable part of the capital, to Garraway's, and was to be
found, surrounded by surgeons and apothecaries, at a particular
table. There were Puritan coffee houses where no oath was
* The chief peculiarity of this dialect was that, in a large class of words,
the O was pronounced like A. Thus stork was pronounced stark. See
Vanbrugh's Relapse. Lord Sunderland was a great master of this court
tune, as Roger North calls it ; and Titus Oates affected it in the hope of
passing for a fine gentleman. Examen, 77. 254.
278 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
heard, and where lankhaired men discussed election and
reprobation through their noses ; Jew coffee houses where
dark eyed money changers from Venice and from Amsterdam
greeted each other ; and Popish coffee houses where, as good
Protestants believed, Jesuits planned, over their cups, another
great fire, and cast silver bullets to shoot the King.*
These gregarious habits had no small share in forming the
character of the Londoner of that age. He was, indeed, a
different being from the rustic Englishman. There was not
then the intercourse which now exists between the two classes.
Only very great men were in the habit of dividing the year
between town and country. Few esquires came to the capital
thrice in their lives. Nor was it yet the practice of all citizens
in easy circumstances to breathe the fresh air of the fields and
woods during some weeks of every summer. A cockney, in a
rural village, was stared at as much as if he had intruded into
a Kraal of Hottentots. On the other hand, when the lord of
a Lincolnshire or Shropshire manor appeared in Fleet Street,
he was as easily distinguished from the resident population as
a Turk or a Lascar. His dress, his gait, his accent, the manner
in which he stared at the shops, stumbled into the gutters, ran
against the porters, and stood under the waterspouts, marked
him out as an excellent subject for the operations of swindlers
and banterers. Bullies jostled him into the kennel. Hackney
coachmen splashed him from head to foot. Thieves explored
with perfect security the huge pockets of his horseman's coat,
while he stood entranced by the splendour of the Lord Mayor's
show. Moneydroppers, sore from the cart's tail, introduced
themselves to him, and appeared to him the most honest
friendly gentlemen that he had ever seen. Painted women,
the refuse of Lewkner Lane and Whetstone Park, passed them-
selves on him for countesses and maids of honour. If he
asked his way to Saint James's, his informants sent him to
Mile End. If he went into a shop, he was instantly discerned
to be a fit purchaser of everything that nobody else would buy,
of secondhand embroidery, copper rings, and watches that
would not go. If he rambled into any fashionable coffee
* Lettres sur les Anglois ; Tom Brown's Tour ; Ward's London Spy ;
The Character of a Coffee House, 1673 ; Rules and Orders of the Coffee
House, 1674 ; Coffee Houses vindicated, 1675 ; A Satyr against Coffee ;
North's Examen, 138. ; Life of Guildford, 152. ; Life of Sir Dudley
North, 149. ; Life of Dr. Radcliffe, published by Curll in 1715. The
liveliest description of Will's is in the City and Country Mouse, There
is a remarkable passage about the influence of the coffee house orators in
Halstead's Succinct Genealogies, printed in 1685.
ENGLAND IN 1685 279
house, he became a mark for the insolent derision of fops and
the grave waggery of Templars. Enraged and mortified, he
soon returned to his mansion, and there, in the homage of his
tenants, and the conversation of his boon companions, found
consolation for the vexations and humiliations which he had
undergone. There he once more felt himself a great man ;
and he saw nothing above him except when at the assizes he
took his seat on the bench near the Judge, or when at the
muster of the militia he saluted the Lord Lieutenant.
The chief cause which made the fusion of the different
elements of society so imperfect was the extreme difificulty
which our ancestors found in passing from place to place. Of
all inventions, the alphabet and the printing press alone
excepted, those inventions which abridge distance have done
most for the civilisation of our species. Every improvement
of the means of locomotion benefits mankind morally and
intellectually as well as materially, and not only facilitates the
interchange of the various productions of nature and art, but
tends to remove national and provincial antipathies, and to
bind together all the branches of the great human family. In
the seventeenth century the inhabitants of London were, for
almost every practical purpose, farther from Reading than
they now are from Edinburgh, and farther from Edinburgh
than they now are from Vienna.
The subjects of Charles the Second were not, it is true,
quite unacquainted with that principle which has, in our own
time, produced an unprecedented revolution in human affairs,
which has enabled navies to advance in the face of wind and
tide, and battalions, attended by all their baggage and artillery,
to traverse kingdoms at a pace equal to that of the fleetest
race horse. The Marquess of Worcester had recently observed
the expansive power of moisture rarefied by heat. After many
experiments he had succeeded in constructing a rude steam
engine, which he called a fire water work, and which he pro-
nounced to be an admirable and most forcible instrument of
propulsion.* But the Marquess was suspected to be a mad-
man, and known to be a Papist. His inventions, therefore,
found no favourable reception. His fire water work might,
perhaps, furnish matter for conversation at a meeting of the
Royal Society, but was not applied to any practical purpose.
There were no railways, except a few made of timber, from the
mouths of the Northumbrian coal pits to the banks of the
* Century of Inventions, 1663. No. 68.
K34
2 80 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
Tyne.* There was very little internal communication by
water. A few attempts had been made to deepen and embank
the natural streams, but with slender success. Hardly a single
navigable canal had been even projected. The English of
that day were in the habit of talking with mingled admiration
and despair of the immense trench by which Lewis the
Fourteenth had made a junction between the Atlantic and the
Mediterranean. They little thought that their country would,
in the course of a few generations, be intersected, at the cost
of private adventurers, by artificial rivers making up more than
four times the length of the Thames, the Severn, and the Trent
together.
It was by the highways that both travellers and goods
generally passed from place to place. And those highways
appear to have been far worse than might have been expected
from the degree of wealth and civilisation which the nation
had even then attained. On the best lines of communication
the ruts were deep, the descents precipitous, and the way often
such as it was hardly possible to distinguish, in the dusk, from
the uninclosed heath and fen which lay on both sides. Ralph
Thoresby, the antiquary, was in danger of losing his way on the
great North road, between Barnby Moor and Tuxford, and
actually lost his way between Doncaster and York.f Pepys
and his wife, travelling in their own coach, lost their way
between Newbury and Reading, In the course of the same
tour they lost their way near Salisbury, and were in danger of
having to pass the night on the plain. | It was only in fine
weather that the whole breadth of the road was available for
wheeled vehicles. Often the mud lay deep on the right and
the left ; and only a narrow track of firm ground rose above the
quagmire. § At such times obstructions and quarrels were
frequent, and the path was sometimes blocked up during a long
time by carriers, neither of whom would break the way. It
happened, almost every day, that coaches stuck fast, until a
team of cattle could be procured from some neighbouring
farm, to tug them out of the slough. But in bad seasons the
traveller had to encounter inconveniences still more serious.
Thoresby, who was in the habit of travelling between Leeds
and the capital, has recorded, in his Diary, such a series of
perils and disasters as might suffice for a journey to the Frozen
* North's Life of Guildford, 136.
t Thoresby's Diary, Oct. 21, 1680, Aug. 3. 1712.
J Pepys's Diary, June 12. and 16. 1668.
§ Ibid. Feb. 28. 1660.
ENGLAND IN 1685 28 I
Ocean or to the Desert of Sahara. On one occasion he
learned that the floods were out between Ware and London,
that passengers had to swim for their lives, and that a higgler
had perished in the attempt to cross. In consequence of these
tidings he turned out of the high road, and was conducted
across some meadows, where it was necessary for him to ride
to the saddle skirts in water.* In the course of another
journey he narrowly escaped being swept away by an inun-
dation of the Trent. He was afterwards detained at Stamford
four days, on account of the state of the roads, and then
ventured to proceed only because fourteen members of the
House of Commons, who were going up in a body to Parlia-
ment, with guides and numerous attendants, took him into
their company.f On the roads of Derbyshire travellers were
in constant fear for their necks, and were frequently compelled
to alight and lead their beasts. J The great route through
Wales to Holyhead was in such a state that, in 1685, a viceroy,
going to Ireland, was five hours in travelling fourteen miles,
from Saint Asaph to Conway. Between Conway and Beau-
maris he was forced to walk great part of the way ; and his
lady was carried in a litter. His coach was, with great diffi-
culty, and by the help of many hands, brought after him entire.
In general, carriages were taken to pieces at Conway, and
borne, on the shoulders of stout Welsh peasants, to the Menai
Straits. § In some parts of Kent and Sussex none but the
strongest horses could, in winter, get through the bog, in
which, at every step, they sank deep. The markets were often
inaccessible during several months. It is said that the fruits
of the earth were sometimes suffered to rot in one place, while
in another place, distant only a few miles, the supply fell far
short of the demand. The wheeled carriages were, in this
district, generally pulled by oxen. H When Prince George of
Denmark visited the stately mansion of Petworth in wet
weather, he was six hours in going nine miles ; and it was
necessary that a body of sturdy hinds should be on each side
of his coach, in order to prop it. Of the carriages which con-
veyed his retinue several were upset and injured. A letter
* Thoresby's Diary, May 17. 1695. t Ibid. Dec. 27. 170S.
J Tour in Derbyshire, by J. Browne, son of Sir Thomas Browne, 1662.
Cotton's Angler, 1676.
§ Correspondence of Henry Earl of Clarendon, Dec. 30. 1685, Jan. i.
1686.
II Postlethwaite's Diet., Roads. History of Hawkhurst, in the Bibli
otheca Topographica Britaunica.
2 82 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
from one of his gentlemen in waiting has been preserved, in
which the unfortunate courtier complains that, during fourteen
hours, he never once alighted, except when his coach was
overturned or stuck fast in the mud.*
One chief cause of the badness of the roads seems to have
been the defective state of the law. Every parish was bound
to repair the highways which passed through it. The peasantry
were forced to give their gratuitous labour six days in the year.
If this was not sufficient, hired labour was employed, and the
expense was met by a parochial rate. That a route connecting
two great towns, which have a large and thriving trade with
each other, should be maintained at the cost of the rural
population scattered between them is obviously unjust ; and
this injustice was peculiarly glaring in the case of the great
North road, which traversed very poor and thinly inhabited
districts, and joined very rich and populous districts. Indeed
it was not in the power of the parishes of Huntingdonshire to
mend a highway worn by the constant traffic between the West
Riding of Yorkshire and London. Soon after the Restoration
this grievance attracted the notice of Parliament ; and an act,
the first of our many turnpike acts, was passed, imposing a
small toll on travellers and goods, for the purpose of keeping
some parts of this important line of communication in good
repair.! This innovation, however, excited many murmurs;
and the other great avenues to the capital were long left under
the old system. A change was at length effected, but not
without much difficulty. For unjust and absurd taxation to
which men are accustomed is often borne far more willingly
than the most reasonable impost which is new. It was not
till many toll bars had been violently pulled down, till the
troops had in many districts been forced to act against the
people, and till much blood had been shed, that a good system
was introduced. J By slow degrees reason triumphed over
prejudice ; and our island is now crossed in every direction by
near thirty thousand miles of turnpike road.
On the best highways heavy articles were, in the time of
Charles the Second, generally conveyed from place to place by
stage waggons. In the straw of these vehicles nestled a crowd
of passengers, who could not afford to travel by coach or on
* Annals of Queen Anne, 1703. Appendix, No. 3.
t 15 Car. II. c. I.
X The evils of the old system are strikingly set forth in many petitions
which appear in the Commons' Journal of 172I. How fierce an opposition
was offered to the new system may be learned from the Gentleman's
Magazine of 1749.
ENGLAND IN 1685 283
horseback, and who were prevented by infirmity, or by the
weight of their luggage, from going on foot. The expense of
transmitting heavy goods in this way was enormous. From
London to Birmingham the charge was seven pounds a ton ;
from London to Exeter twelve pounds a ton.* This was about
fifteen pence a ton for every mile, more by a third than was
afterwards charged on turnpike roads, and fifteen times what is
now demanded by railway companies. The cost of conveyance
amounted to a prohibitory tax on many useful articles. Coal
in particular was never seen except in the districts where it was
produced, or in the districts to which it could be carried by sea,
and was indeed always known in the South of England by the
name of sea coal.
On byroads, and generally throughout the country north of
York and west of Exeter, goods were carried by long trains of
packhorses. These strong and patient beasts, the breed of
which is now extinct, were attended by a class of men who seem
to have borne much resemblance to the Spanish muleteers.
A traveller of humble condition often found it convenient to
perform a journey mounted on a packsaddle between two
baskets, under the care of these hardy guides. The expense
of this mode of conveyance was small. But the caravan
moved at a foot's pace ; and in winter the cold was often
insupportable, t
The rich commonly travelled in their own carriages, with at
least four horses. Cotton, the facetious poet, attempted to go
from London to the Peak with a single pair, but found at Saint
Albans that the journey would be insupportably tedious, and
altered his plan. J A coach and six is in our time never seen,
except as part of some pageant. The frequent mention there-
fore of such equipages in old books is likely to mislead us. We
attribute to magnificence what was really the effect of a very
disagreeable necessity. People, in the time of Charles the
Second, travelled with six horses, because with a smaller
number there was great danger of sticking fast in the mire.
Nor were even six horses always sufficient. Vanbrugh, in the
succeeding generation, described with great humour the way in
which a country gentleman, newly chosen a member of
Parliament, went up to London. On that occasion all the
exertions of six beasts, two of which had been taken from the
* Postlethwaite's Diet., Roads.
t Loiciis and Elmete. Marshall's Rural Economy of England. In 1739
Roderic Random came from Scotland to Newcastle on a packhorse.
Z Cotton's Epistle to J. Bradshaw,
284 HISTORY OF ENGLAND
plough, could not save the family coach from being imbedded
in a quagmire.
Public carriages had recently been much improved. During
the years which immediately followed the Restoration, a
diligence ran between London and Oxford in two days. The
passengers slept at Beaconsfield. At length, in the spring of
1669, a great and daring innovation was attempted. It was
announced that a vehicle, described as the Flying Coach,
would perform the whole journey between sunrise and sunset.
This spirited undertaking was solemnly considered and
sanctioned by the Heads of the University, and appears to
have excited the same sort of interest which is excited in our
own time by the opening of a new railway. The Vicechancellor,
by a notice affixed in all public places, prescribed the hour
and place of departure. The success of the experiment was
complete. At six in the moniing the carriage began to move
from before the ancient front of All Souls College : and at seven
in the evening the adventurous gentlemen who had run the
first risk were safely deposited at their inn in London.* The
emulation of the sister University was moved ; and soon a
diligence was set up which in one day carried passengers from
Cambridge to the capital. At the close of the reign of Charles
the Second, flying carriages ran thrice a week from London to
the chief towns. But no stage coach, indeed no stage waggon,
appears to have proceeded further north than York, or further
west than Exeter. The ordinary day's journey of a flying coach
was about fifty miles in the summer ; but in winter, when the
ways were bad and the nights long, little more than thirty. The
Chester coach, the York coach, and the Exeter coach generally
reached London in four days during the fine season, but at
Christmas not till the sixth day. The passengers, six in
number, were all seated in the carriage. For accidents were so
frequent that it would have been most perilous to mount the
roof. The ordinary fare was about twopence halfpenny a mile
in summer, and somewhat more in winter.!
This mode of travelling, which by Englishmen of the present
day would be regarded as insufferably slow, seemed to our
ancestors wonderfully and indeed alarmingly rapid. In a work
published a few months before the death of Charles the
Second, the flying coaches are extolled as far superior to any
* Anthony k Wood's Life of himself.
t Chamberlayne's State of England, 1684. See also the list of stage
coaches and waggons at the end of the book, entitled Angliae Metropolis,
1690.
ENGLAND IN 1685 285
similar vehicles ever known in the world. Their velocity is the
sul)ject of special commendation, and is triumphantly con-
trasted with the sluggish pace of the continental posts. But
with boasts like these was mingled the sound of complaint and
invective. The interests of large classes had been unfavourably
affected by the establishment of the new diligences ; and, as
usual, many persons were, from mere stupidity and obstinacy,
disposed to clamour against the innovation, simply because it
was an innovation. It was vehemently argued that this mode
of conveyance would be fatal to the breed of horses and to the
noble art of horsemanship ; that the Thames, which had long
been an important nursery of seamen, would cease to be the
chief thoroughfare from London up to Windsor and down to
Gravesendj that saddlers and spurriers would be ruined by
hundreds ; that numerous inns, at which mounted travellers had
been in the habit of stopping, would be deserted, and would
no longer pay any rent ; that the new carriages were too hot
in summer and too cold in winter ; that the passengers were
grievously annoyed by invalids and crying children ; that the
coach sometimes reached the inn so late that it was impossible
to get supper, and sometimes started so early that it was
impossible to get breakfast. On these grounds it was gravely
recommended that no pubUc carriage should be permitted to
have more than four horses, to start oftener than once a week,
or to go more than thirty miles a day. It was hoped that, if
this regulation were adopted, all except the sick and the lame
would return to the old mode of travelling. Petitions embody-
ing such opinions as these were presented to the king in council
from several companies of the City of London, from several
provincial towns, and from the justices of several counties.
We smile at these things. It is not impossible that our
descendants, when they read the history of the opposition
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